BOSTON (Sept. 13, 2005)- Lux Scientiae, Incorporated, (LuxSci) a Boston-based Secure Internet Services Provider, today announced the release of its newest service, SecureLine.

SecureLine is a new service provided by LuxSci that allows its users to easily send and receive secure email messages to and from anyone on the Internet who has an email address – no matter what kind of email software or service that correspondent has and no matter how insecure that correspondent’s current email services are!

SecureLine enables you to easily meet HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and other communication security regulations and policies and it enables account administrators to optionally require that all users employ SecureLine and thus participate only in secure communications.

In order to meet the combined goals of ease of use, maximum security, and communications with anyone, anywhere, SecureLine seamlessly integrates two distinct modes of secure email communications: SecureLine Escrow and SecureLine PKI.

SecureLine Escrow: For secure communications with anyone, anywhere, you can use “SecureLine Escrow”. When composing an email for escrow, the SecureLine-enabled sender will provide an authorization question and answer; something that is confidential and known only to the sender, recipient, and other authorized people. When sent, the secure email message is encrypted and stored in a special “escrow” database at LuxSci. The recipient receives an email notification with the password to the secure message. The recipient then follows a provided link to the “Escrow Portal” to pick up the secure message and to optionally securely reply back to the sender. In order to access the Escrowed message, the recipient needs both the password from the notification email and the answer to the sender-provided authorization question. Thus, SecureLine Escrow allows simple secure communication with anyone who has an email address.

SecureLine PKI: For secure communications with other users of SecureLine and with other people on the Internet who have compatible secure email services, LuxSci’s SecureLine also supports a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) compatible with the S/MIME (Secure MIME) and PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) Public Key technologies. In a public key system, the encrypted message content is sent within the email message to the recipient, instead of being placed in escrow for later retrieval; the recipient can easily decrypt and read such secure messages from within his/her usual email program or WebMail. This mode of operation is more flexible and more like normal email usage than the “Escrow” system; however it requires that the recipient be another SecureLine user or someone who utilizes PGP or S/MIME email encryption technologies.

To read more about SecureLine, what features it provides and how exactly it is extremely easy to use, see the SecureLine description.

When logging into LuxSci’s standard WebMail portal, users can now optionally use a visual keyboard to enter their password via their mouse rather than typing it in using their regular keyboard. This is be helpful to those using untrusted computers — computers, such as those in Internet Cafes, that may be infected with spyware which could be capturing all of their keystrokes. Use of the visual keyboard can help mitigate the possibility that spyware programs running on your computer could capture your password.

LuxSci’s Account API has been expanded to allow account administrators to perform many new functions in an automated fashion:

• Add and delete domains
• Add and delete email aliases
• Get reports on the status of any or all domains in their account
• Get reports on the status of any or all email aliases and email forwards in their account.

These new API functions are supported by both the Web Services and the CGI Account API interfaces.

LuxSci’s account management API now supports a new command called “Copy Preferences”. This command allows you to copy all of the preferences that one user has to another user in your account. Thus, it is easy to force a user to have the same regional preferences and WebMail behavior as any other user of your choice.

User Creation Update:When an account administrator creates a new user via the LuxSci portal or via the API, the new user’s complete preferences will be copied from the account’s main administrator. Previously, just selected regional preferences were copied. Now, all applicable preferences are copied, making the new user’s initial experience as close to that as the main account administrator’s as possible.

Note that if you are creating new users via the API, you can optionally specify any existing user from which to copy the new user’s preferences.

LuxSci has extended its Account Management API to support access via Web Services using your choice of RPC or Document Literal SOAP encodings. Detailed help and examples can be found in LuxSci’s members’ help. LuxSci still fully supports its secure form post-based interface to the same API.Note that the API is available to all clients at no additional charge. Contact our support staff if you would like API access enabled for your account.

LuxSci has added a new optional feature to its Private Labeled WebMail that allows account administrators to perform level-1 support for all their clients and escalate issues to LuxSci support only if/when necessary.Support tickets created by non-administrative users of Private Labeled accounts enabled for this would only be emailed to the account administrators and not to LuxSci staff. LuxSci staff would not generally see and would not respond to these tickets at all — it would be up to your support staff to do so. If, however, your account administrator needs assistance with an issue, that account administrator can always create a normal LuxSci support ticket asking for help, referencing any existing tickets relevant to the issue.

Email Defense has been updated with several significant enhancements. These include an improved user interface and full support for Mozilla FireFox. Additionally, this new release includes the following significant addition:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF):

• We are adding a Sender Policy Framework classifier to the Spam detection system to help identify and block fraudulent “spoofing” emails —  those sent by Spammers using forged “From” addresses.
• For each inbound message, the SPF classifier will look up the sending domain’s Domain Naming System (DNS) record and its list of authorized IP addresses (if such are specified). Messages that carry an IP address not found on the authorized list will be given a higher ‘spam-likelihood’ score.
• By determining whether or not the relationship between the DNS record and the IP address is legitimate, Email Defense can more accurately filter out fraudulent spoofed emails. As a result, this reduces risk for end-users who might be duped by the email into divulging confidential personal information.
• LuxSci supports the addition of entries to your DNS records which will support SPF — to help make it harder for Spammers to forge email from your domain. If you would like us to add an SPF record to your DNS entries or if you would like help in determining what SPF records to add yourself, contact our support team.

LuxSci has introduced a User API that allows users to access user-level information and perform user-level functions over Web Services. Currently, User API access is limited to users with an Enterprise WebAide license and it allows these users to: import, export, and synchronize address book data with their WebAide Address Books. It also allows access to some information from the user’s current Private Labeled Theme to permit similar private labeling of remote programs and web sites.

 LuxSci’s custom email filtering tool now supports a “bounce” action. Using this new action, users can make custom filters that bounce selected email messages back to the sender with a “User unknown” error. Other actions already supported by this tool allow you to forward messages, save messages to a selected folder, delete messages, add custom headers, and more.