Email Spam, Virus, Content, Attachment, and Custom Filtering

Filtering Overview

LuxSci offers three several flavors of email filtering and email flow management. The features contained in them are compared, above, in the various "tabs".

Basic Spam and Virus Filtering

Combines many powerful open source programs to provide an effective inexpensive filtering solution. Unlike Premium Email Filtering, which requires licensing on a per-domain basis, Basic Filtering can be added on a per-user basis.

Basic Filtering is available only to customers whose email is hosted with LuxSci.

More on: Basic Spam and Virus Filtering

Premium Spam and Virus Filtering: Email Defense

LuxSci is a certified partner of McAfee and integrates McAfee's inbound and outbound filtering solutions seamlessly into its email hosting services to provide one of the best filtering services in the industry. It combines redundant virus filters with a host of spam filters which vote to determine the likelihood that a message is spam. Email Defense catches 98% or more of spam while mistaking very few legitimate email messages as spam. Combined with easy domain-wide configuration and flexible policies, Email Defense is a powerful and featureful solution for both large organizations and individuals.

LuxSci also offers standalone Email Defense accounts for those with existing third party email services who wish to add Email Defense filters to transparently clean their email of unwanted messages before delivery.

More on: Premium Email Filtering

Standard Features: Custom Filtering and Email Management

Customers whose email is hosted by LuxSci automatically have access to an array of additional features for managing the flow of inbound and outbound email in their accounts. These features are included at no additional charge; however, some of these features are only available with the purchase of certain services (i.e. like the automated email encryption and decryption features that come with SecureLine).
Some of these features include: custom server-side email filters, taglines and disclaimers, email content scanning, control over to whom messages can be sent, etc.

Inbound Email Spam Filtering

Basic and Premium Email Filtering both include Spam filtering for inbound email.

	Basic	Premium
Spam filtering technologies used:	SpamAssassin	McAfee
Per-user white and black lists:
Exempt recipients from Spam Filtering:
Disable Spam Filter?
Receive a daily email reporting on all quarantined messages so you can easily review them and release possible legitimate email?
Tag Spam emails with "[SPAM]" subject tags?
Save Spam messages to a separate email folder?		(*)
Quarantine Spam messages to a separate place you can access 24/7?	(*)
Deny Spam messages?	(*)
Global domain-wide white and black lists?
Disk space used by saved (quarantined) Spam is free?
Customize filtering options by the language you correspond in?
Customize the Spam filtering thresholds
Have reports included in messages indicating exactly why they were considered Spam?
Automatic white-listing of all addresses in your address book? (optional)
Configuration required	Per-user	Per-domain & per-user

(*) These items are not included with the service, per-se, but are possible with the use of a custom email filters for users whose email is hosted with LuxSci.

Inbound Email Virus Filtering

Basic and Premium Email Filtering both include virus filtering for inbound email.

	Basic	Premium
Virus filter/filters used	Clam AntiVirus	Sophos, McAfee, Authentium
Frequency filters updated	Hourly	5 minutes
Can delete viruses?
Can disable virus scanning?
Can save viruses to an email folder?		(*)
Can deny messages containing viruses?	(*)
Can quarantine viruses in a separate safe location (that only administrators can access)?
Can clean messages of viruses prior to delivery?
Can strip messages of viruses prior to delivery?
Can send notices to the senders and/or recipients of viruses?
Configuration required	Per-user	Per-domain & per-user

(*) These items are not included with the service, per-se, but are possible with the use of a custom email filters for users whose email is hosted with LuxSci.

Inbound Email Content Filtering

Premium email filtering and Standard filtering provide options for filtering inbound email by content. Customizable email content filtering is not included with Basic Email Filtering. Customers whose email is hosted with LuxSci can take advantage of the features included with both Premium Email Filtering and Standard Filtering.

	Standard	Premium
Can define keyword lists for use in inbound content filtering?
Inbound content filtering supports regular expression matching?
Can automatically remove malicious HTML tags (iframe, frame, layer, span, meta style) from messages?
Can automatically disable JavaScript/Java/ActiveX objects, HTML comments, and invalid HTML attributes in email messages?
Can block Spam "beacons" and web bugs in messages?
Can replace all image links with transparent images?
Can optionally replace all links with special links that will give a) users a warning about following links in email messages, b) track links clicked on by your users in their email, or c) display a warning and deny them the ability to go to the web site? You can exclude URLs of your choice from this click protection.

Premium email filtering can only perform certain actions for messages that match a defined keyword list. Standard filtering is much more flexible and can perform actions for messages that:

Do or do not match a defined keyword or regular expression list.
Are from a certain sender or senders
Are to a certain address or addresses
Have a specific priroity
Are of a certain size
Have an email header a user defined type that contains specific content
Are backscatter

The actions that can be taken for such "matches" include:

	Standard	Premium
Can optionally send customizable notification email messages?
"White list" messages?
Automatically remove ALL HTML content?
Quarantine messages (where only account administrators can access the messages)?
Tag the subject of messages?
Deny messages?
Forward messages to a custom distribution list?
Save messages to a folder?
Silently delete messages?
Forward a copy of messages invisibly to a distribution list (so the end user would not know or have any control over this)?
Flag messages as important?
Add custom email headers to messages?
Send forwards and notices of messages to cell phones?
Tag messages with custom keywords?
Save messages to a WebAide?

Inbound Email Attachment Filtering

Premium email filtering and Standard filtering provide options for filtering inbound email by included attachments. Attachment filtering is not included with Basic Email Filtering. Customers whose email is hosted with LuxSci can take advantage of the features included with both Premium Email Filtering and Standard Filtering.

	Standard	Premium
Can limit the size of messages received?
Can limit the size of individual attachment types received?
Can block attachments based on attachment file type and size?
Can define custom attachment filtering rules?
Allows you to automatically forward messages with certain types of attachments to a custom distribution list of email addresses.
Can bounce messages with attachments you do not want?
Can remove specific unwanted attachments from messages?
Allows you quarantine messages with attachments that you do not want so that an administrator can review them?
Allows you to specify rules that differentiate between normal ZIP files and encrypted ZIP files.
Can examine attachments inside unencrypted ZIP files for policy violations?
Can remove all attachments from messages?
Can convert messages into plain text?

Other Inbound Filtering Features

Premium Email Filtering and Standard Filtering both contain additional features for filtering and managing inbound email messages.

	Standard	Premium
Block "Backscatter Spam"?
Uses a distributed, redundant email filtering server architecture to offload filtering from your email servers and to ensure that your email gets filtered and delivered even in the case of server failure?
Automatically decrypt inbound email messages using SecureLine	(*)
Capturing: Send a copy of all inbound email messages to a specific email address?
Sender Allow Only: Globally allow inbound messages only from specific senders or domains?
Sender Deny: Globally refuse all inbound email from specific senders or domains?
IP Allow/Deny: Globally allow or refuse inbound email based on IP address?
Auto-Backup: Save a copy of all recent email messages to a user to a separate email folder.
Auto-Responders: Vacation / Away messages can be sent back to people?
Instantly block Denial of Service and other SMTP-based attacks, including dictionary attacks, email bombs, and email flooding?
Hides your actual inbound email servers from the Internet?
Employs real-time monitoring and analysis of incoming network traffic?

(*) Requires a SecureLine license.

Outbound Email Filtering

Premium Email Filtering and Standard Filtering both contain features for filtering and managing outbound email messages (i.e. those sent by your users). Basic Email Filtering does not include any outbound filtering options.

Note that the outbound filtering features of Premium Email Filtering are an optional add-on, not included with the standard Premium Email Filtering package.

	Standard	Premium
Deliver email over TLS-encrypted connections, if possible?
Restrict forwarded email messages to only deliver to recipients that support TLS-encrypted delivery?
Scan outbound email messages for viruses?
Quarantine, remove, or clean outbound messages that contain viruses?
Deny outbound email messages that contain viruses?
Send notifications of outbound messages containing viruses to a distribution list?
Limit the size of messages sent?
Limit the size of individual attachment types sent?
Prohibit the sending of certain kinds of attachments?
Quarantine, deny, or strip outbound messages containing unwanted attachments?
Add global taglines or disclaimers to outbound email messages?
Add per-user taglines or disclaimers to outbound email messages?
Scan outbound email for specific keywords/phrases?
Content scanning supports regular expressions?
Messages matching your keyword list can be denied?
Auditing: Copies of messages matching your keyword list can sent to a distribution list?
Outbound content scanning matches any content in the message?
Outbound content scanning can match only the subject or body?
Auto-Encryption: Messages matching your keyword list can be encrypted using SecureLine?	(*)
Capturing: Can send copies of all outbound email messages to a specified email address?
Recipient Allow Only: can restrict sending so only certain recipients are allowed?
Recipient Deny: can restrict sending so certain recipients are not allowed?
Anonymization: Remove sender IP address information from sent messages?
Send to Sent: Send copies of sent messages to your "sent" email folder (so IMAP does not need to be used to do this).

(*) Requires a SecureLine license.

Email Filtering Services