Email Filtering FAQ

Architecture

Q): What is the reliability of your network?
A): Our global network consists of several, geographically disperse, data centers. Each data center is redundant in itself and every data center is redundant of each other. We guarantees 99.999% uptime and has a historic uptime of 100%.
 
Q): Will there be a delay in the delivery of my email?
A):  Due to the way we globally load balanace our network, we currently are able to process a message in less than 1/10th of a second. As a client, you will not notice any delay in the delivery of your e-mail.

Spam Filtering

Q): How do you know which messages are spam email?
A): Our junk mail filter is a system that we have developed in house. We filter spam in a three-step process.

First we use what we call "bait" e-mail addresses. We have hundreds of e-mail addresses that we use to actively look for spam. We take those spam messages and run them through a process that we've created where we create a fingerprint for each message. Those fingerprints are added to our database.

Secondly, when new e-mail enters our network, we fingerprint each message and cross reference our database to see if there is a match. If there is a match, the message is marked as spam.

If there is no match, we then run the message through a series of test in which we look at different aspects of the message including the header, subject, and content of the message. These tests give the message a score and if that score hits a certain threshold, we mark that message as spam.

This whole process takes less than a second to perform.

Q): What happens to the spam email?
A): As the administrator, you have four options in regards to the junk.

The first, and most popular, option is to leave the junk e-mail on our network. As we catch the junk e-mail, we create a temporary junk e-mail box for each of your users. We then notify each user that they have junk e-mail on our server and we give them a link to a web-based control panel where they can check it. As the administrator, you can set the notification interval. We hold the junk e-mail on our network for 30 days before it is deleted.

The second option is to redirect all the junk mail to a single e-mail address. For example, spam@yourcompany.com.

The third option is to have us insert an x-header. The junk e-mail is delivered to your mail server giving you the ability to reroute the e-mail via the x-header variable.

The fourth option is the ability to modify the subject. For example, you could insert the word JUNK before the subject so that the individual users could set up their own filters at the e-mail client level. 

Virus Filtering

Q): I already have virus protection, why do I need yours?
A): You may or may not need our virus protection. For this reason, we offer our services with and without virus protection. Typically our clients already have some sort of virus protection on their network including their e-mail server and client desktops.

Due to the fact that the majority of viruses are spread via e-mail, our virus filtering is simply two more layers of protection. Our partners, Trend Micro and Sophos, maintain a global footprint on the latest virus activities insuring our customers the best protection available on the market today.
 
Q): What virus engines do you use and why?
A): We have partnered with Trend Micro and Sophos in order to offer enterprise level virus protection. Typically our clients use Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee on their local networks. By enabling our e-mail virus protection, our clients receive three levels of anti-virus protection.

Quarantine

Q): How does the Quarantine work?
A):  The Quarantine is available, via web-based control panel, to Administrators at the domain level. Any e-mail message that has been filtered by the Attachment Filtering will be deliverd to the Quarantine for review. Messages remain in Quarantine for 30 days. Administrators can view, deliver or delete messages in the Quarantine.

Black & White Lists

Q): What is a black/white list?
A):  Black lists are simply rules set up to BLOCK messages based on domain name or e-mail address. White lists ALLOW messages to be delivered based on domain name or e-mail address.
 
Q): How do the administrative black/white lists work with the user level black/white lists?
A):  Our system allows administrators the ability to create master black and white lists on a per domain basis. Administrators can also give their individual users the ability to create individual custom black and white lists. Administrative lists always take precedence to user-level lists.