Spam & Virus Filtering

Protecting Your Network at the Perimeter

Virus and Worm Scanning provides organizations with an additional layer of virus protection at the network perimeter. Through sophisticated technology and content behavior analysis, Email Defense detects, quarantines, blocks and strips viruses and worms before they can enter or leave the network. Email Defense's virus scanning feature is updated every five minutes with new virus and signature patterns to ensure continuous proactive virus protection.

Teaming with Anti-Virus Leaders

The Email Defense package provides complementary protection to on-premise anti-virus products, and is powered by industry-leading virus-scanning engines McAfee, Authentium and Sophos. With the Email Defense triple virus filter and worm solution, you get:

• Our proprietary worm detection technology, which identifies and intercepts zero-day mass mailing worms before they enter your corporate network.
• Protection from three leading third-party engines, McAfee, Authetium and Sophos.
• Sophisticated security to complement your current on-premise solution.
• Up-to-the-minute defense against the latest threats with virus definition updates every five minutes.

Zero-Day Worm Threat Protection

Email Defense's Virus and Worm Scanning feature protects customers from the dangers of mass mailing worms and viruses, often hours before anti-virus services can distribute signature updates to their customers. Through sophisticated content behavior analysis, our Threat Center is able to quickly identify sudden surges of suspicious email messages, which are then intercepted before they can reach customers' email networks.

This worm detection system proves valuable in instances such as the outbreak of the destructive MyDoom worm, which was blocked 23 minutes after it was detected. Meanwhile, third-party anti-virus engines took up to five hours to issue protection to their customers.

Email Security - the Results

Using a multi-layered spam filtering approach, Email Defense can dynamically calculate the spam probability of each spam message and:

• Instantly block 99% of Spam.
• Complete safe, external scanning to block Spam before it reaches your network.
• Accurately Spam filter content to ensure industry-leading low false positive rates.
• Provide up-to-the-minute defense against the latest blended email threats.
• Effectively quarantine spam for seven days.
• Generate custom quarantine management reports.

Sophisticated Filtering

Unlike some competitor spam filtering solutions which use only a single spam classification technique, Email Defense leverages several of the industry's most effective spam detection techniques to separately analyze the same message, including:

• Premium Anti-Spam Multi-Language Filter - Utilizing Cloudmark AntiSpam filtering, this level of security protects you from Spam on a global scale. It is continually updated based on real-time feedback provided by a worldwide network of users. The software used for this filter is constantly being reevaluated to ensure that the very best programs are being used for our filters.
• Sender Policy Framework (SPF)/Sender ID - For inbound messages, LuxSci can check if the message has an associated SPF/Sender ID record. If there is, it can help determine if the email sender's domain is from a list of IP addresses authorized to send email from that domain. LuxSci can also protect your domain from being used in forged email messages.
• Statistical Filtering - Our filtering methods utilize a statistical Bayesian algorithm to determine the probability that an email message is spam based on how often elements in that message have appeared in other spam emails.
• Industry Heuristics - Email Defense incorporates thousands of successful industry-wide spam-fighting rules into its filtering layers.
• Proprietary Heuristics - Email Defense experts write and update thousands of proprietary rules to block spam using real-time data from the Threat Center.
• Reputation Analysis - Like black and white lists, reputation analysis blocks spam-based on comprehensive information about the source of the message - rating the reputation of the sender based upon the percentage of spam messages sent from that IP address in the past.
• URL filtering - URL filtering works by comparing embedded links found in email messages with URLs associated with identified spam.
• Reputation-based RBL filtering - Email Defense assigns a level of trust to key real-time blackhole lists (RBL), which rates the reputation of the RBL based on its accuracy at blocking spam.

Fraud Protection and Anti-Phishing Features

Phishing attacks use spam techniques to distribute large volumes of fraudulent, yet official-looking, emails designed to deceive consumers into disclosing sensitive information. By disguising the messages to appear from well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers have been able to convince up to five percent of email users to give up sensitive personal information.

Phishing emails, like spam, can be identified and filtered out of inbound email to stop employees from receiving them. The Email Defense Service anti-spam rules automatically protect businesses from anti-fraud and phishing scams before they can enter your network. The Email Defense Threat Center monitors the global state of email communication, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to stay ahead of the latest spam and phishing attacks and keep your network safe from unwanted mail.

Content Filtering

Now, more than ever, enterprises need sophisticated tools to protect themselves and their end users against the increasingly advanced tactics of spammers. While spam poses some very real productivity problems for organizations, inappropriate content in attachments in email are increasing corporate risk and liability. The damaging power exists in the form of emails containing racially-insensitive material, offensive jokes, and company-sensitive information and attachments that contain pornographic images or viruses, or are so large they devour network bandwidth.

Keep Your Network Safe from Attacks

Stop SMTP Attacks

Significant threats to the enterprise come in the form of Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, Dictionary Harvest Attacks (DHA), mail bombs, email flooding, and other attacks designed to interrupt service or collect corporate or personal email addresses. Because email utilizes the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP), an open-recipient system that allows anyone to send messages to anyone else without the recipient's permission, your email server is always at risk for these attacks. Email Defense is here to help.

Shield Your Network

Our Email Defense Service removes the threat of network probes and completely shields your network from vulnerability and attack. You can now conceal your Internet-facing mail servers and gateways, and remove the threat of anonymous connections without hassle. By pointing your Mail Exchange (MX) record to Email Defense, a real-time filtering process:

• Conceals your critical messaging gateways and shields groupware email servers from attack.
• Protects your email infrastructure at your network gateway, providing real-time monitoring and analysis of incoming messaging traffic.
• Instantly blocks Denial of Service and other SMTP-based attacks, including dictionary attacks, email bombs and email flooding.

Keyword Filtering

Content and Attachment Filtering is standard in the Email Defense Service and provides organizations with a layer of protection at the network perimeter. This filtering enables Email Defense to identify, quarantine and block unwanted and malicious content in body copy and in attachments before they can enter your internal network.

Keeping Out the Bugs - Spam and Bug Beacons

Web bugs, intrusive and nearly imperceptible tags embedded in HTML that give spammers the ability to monitor end-user activity and obtain their information, are a nuisance. Luckily, our Content and Attachment Filtering includes an HTML shield that blocks web bugs as well as spam beacons.

Click Protection

What used to be a harmless click on an embedded email link to an unknown web site is now a security risk. Today, linking to suspect Web sites can open up enterprises and their users to email attacks and other security risks that can drain valuable resources. To combat this, Email Defense can warn users before they link to suspect Web sites--further increasing corporate control and security.

Email Defense also provides enterprises with insight into their users' email and Web behavior by enabling them to track URL click-throughs from email to the Web. In addition, they can monitor if users are clicking on Web sites that would have negative consequences that could expose their infrastructure to hackers and continuous attacks.

How does Click Protection work?

Email Defense enables administrators to build URL white lists using full URL descriptors, straight IP addresses, and entire domains--all while leveraging wildcard (*) characters to maximize coverage.

Enterprises can choose to enable and disable URL click-throughs from email, or display a warning message before allowing or denying the click. Once clicked, the link is temporarily redirected to a pre-customized warning message for the user. Depending on the policy settings for that particular URL, the user will either be denied or allowed access to it.

Administrators can also generate reports on any URL links that have been clicked by a user and obtain other statistics for tracking URL trends. Reports can be configured per user or for the entire domain.

FileSafe and Message Continuity Services

Fail Safe Message Recovery

In the case of a server emergency, inbound emails sometimes can get lost in the shuffle. If they can't be delivered, more often they will just get bounced; with Fail Safe Message Recovery, you can get your messages delivered with no extra effort once your server is back online.

This option is ideal for customers whose email is not hosted by LuxSci. If your email is hosted by LuxSci, then LuxSci's redundant inbound email processing system provides much the same functionality as FailSafe — queuing email in the case that your LuxSci email server is not available.

How does this work?

Fail Safe Message Recovery ensures that your company will never lose an email in the event your business is struck by an unforeseeable outage or malfunction, or during planned maintenance by providing automatic email backup. With Fail Safe, organizations no longer risk email delays, interception, damage or loss.

• Provides automated, worry-free email delivery protection.
• Minimizes productivity loss in the event of a disaster.
• Engages automatically for instantaneous protection.
• Provides manual start-up option to accommodate system maintenance.
• Offers outage notifications and regular system updates.
• Includes five rolling days of unlimited storage.
• Automatically delivers all spooled email upon outage completion.

Fail Safe provides easy administration through the Control Console our convenient Web-based administrative portal that is also central to management of the Email Defense Service. Through the Control Console, users can:

• Set the service for automatic or manual startup.
• Determine whether mail is flowing normally, being spooled in Fail Safe, or being released following at outage.
• Test the connection between their mail server(s) and LuxSci.
• Set up notification delivery options.

Your organization can be protected from email threats and the loss of email messages due to unexpected or planned outages in less than one business day with the Email Defense Service and Fail Safe Message Recovery.

Message Continuity

Sometimes simply storing emails during a server outage isn't sufficient. With Message Continuity, not only is your time period and amount of rolling storage extended, but you also can access and use your email through our special portal. This product is an extended version of our Fail Safe Message Recovery option.

How does this work?

Message Continuity is delivered through a convenient managed service that enables businesses to access and use email during server outages. Message Continuity works in a similar way to Fail Safe, but with extended features.

• Automatically begins once outage is detected.
• Delivers outage notifications and system updates.
• Queues messages for up to 60 days.
• No limit on the amount of email queued.
• Users can read and reply to queued email, as well as send new messages through our secure portal.

As always, your privacy is important to us. Because of this, administrators and support do not have access to your personal queued email.

Outbound Filtering

Outbound Message Filtering

Clean and secure emails are something we all want. With Email Defense, you are assured the best in email filtering technology. But while inbound email threats receive the bulk of attention from network administrators, outbound email can cause tremendous problems for organizations. Through outbound email, confidential information can get into the wrong hands, servers can crash from dangerously-sized attachments, and organizations face risk a liability from the distribution of emails containing inappropriate content.

Note that this service is compatible with the use of LuxSci's standard outbound SMTP and WebMail services. Your email can go to LuxSci's servers first and then be forwarded through the special outbound message filtering servers for additional attention.

How does this work?

Outbound Message Filtering enables businesses and service providers to proactively integrate email policy enforcement for all messages leaving corporate networks en route to valued customers or business partners.

• Prevent company-sensitive information from being distributed.
• Stop inappropriate content from being sent from and within your domain.
• Strip oversize attachments to avoid causing server lag.
• Block the transmission of harmful viruses and worms with customizable filtering rules.
• Your email server "smarthosts" through the outbound filters so that all outbound email is processed.

Let Outbound Message Filtering protect your domain by:

• Eliminating the risk of infecting business partners or customers, thus preserving the integrity of your business.
• Protecting information assets by preventing the accidental or intentional distribution of proprietary corporate information.
• Reducing legal liabilities associated emails containing inappropriate content.
• Establishing and enforcing policies around bandwidth-draining attachments.
• Filtering by content keywords or phrases and by attachment type and size.

Outbound Message Filtering gives your outbound emails the same treatment as your incoming mail gets; using industry-leading software from Sophos, McAfee, and Authentium, Outbound Message Filtering makes sure that your email traffic is secure.

More Features

High Availability and Zero Latency Message Delivery

Email Defense will not slow the speed of delivery of your email in any way. Leveraging redundant, load-balanced server architecture, Email Defense provides carrier-class availability of filtering and delivery components. Sub-second processing provides for almost no delay as messages are "proxy-streamed" to their ultimate destinations.

Recipient Shield

Email Defense also allows administrators to add recipients to a Deny list, where incoming mail sent to specific email addresses (such as the address of a former employee) is denied, accepted and bounced, or accepted and discarded. These actions can be set to vary by whether the email address is found on the Deny list or is merely invalid in your domain.

Email Quarantine Features

Email Defense consistently achieves industry-leading low false positive rates using "intelligent," customizable spam filtering technology. Simply blocking or allowing email according to default rules isn't an effective method for optimizing filtering. With easy and personalized conditioning, Email Defense offers superior protection against Spam and false positives.

Setting Rules Around Legitimate Messages

Allowing end-user control, where employees are allowed to "condition" their own quarantine, helps reduce the amount of time IT managers spend dealing with spam, and also further ensures that the correct messages are quarantined.

Sophisticated End-User Conditioning

If you opt for end-user management your employees will be sent a periodic Quarantine Report. Employees then review the messages identified as Spam to further define the quarantine rules by deleting, forwarding, always allowing, or always denying the messages.

Quarantine Reports

Protected users can get regular reports of messages that have been quarantined due to their anti-Spam, anti-Virus, or content filtering policies. Users can easily delete or release messages from the quarantine, as well as update their Allow and Deny lists, right from their email clients. Reports are also available or at any time through the Email Defense portal.

Email Defense Portal

Email Defense users and account administrators will be provided with access to the Email Defense portal where they can configure their email and virus filtering policies, view detailed reports, and see their quarantined messages.

Email Defense's customizable and easy-to-use Control Console is a centralized management platform that provides you with one interface for managing all corporate-wide email threats, protection and security. With the Control Console you can:

• Obtain cross-browser support for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.
• Establish numerous policies that instruct the Email Defense Service on how to handle viruses, spam, unwanted attachments, unwanted content and unwanted HTML in messages intended for recipients on your network.
• Reduce the IT department spam-management burden by determining whether the quarantine process for spam and unwanted email will be managed by your IT department, your end users, or both.
• Create customized message rules lists, including "Allow" and "Deny" lists (for message senders), as well as an "Exempt Users" list (for users and recipients). Virus and spam filter emails by content, attachment type, and more.
• Customize policy control and enforcement to be able to implement and enforce email policy for your entire organization--whether your organization has one office or multiple offices located around the world.
• Reduce corporate liability and risk by only allowing safe emails into your network.

Protection for non-LuxSci Accounts

Simply put, Email Defense is among the best in email filtering technology. Even if you do not have a LuxSci-hosted account, purchasing Email Defense through LuxSci is a breeze.

How does this work?

Even if a company other than LuxSci provides your email hosting services, you can still order Email Defense from LuxSci and use it to filter your email. Service provisioning and implementation requires no data migration or integration. You would simply point your Mail Exchange (MX) records located within their DNS infrastructure to our Email Defense servers. Recipient auto-discovery technology provides for a seamless method of managing end-user filtering data and policies with no additional integration. You can use Email Defense with no change to your existing email infrastructure or practices!

Pricing

Pricing Overview

• $1.35 per user per month standard base price
• No minimums for LuxSci email hosting clients! You can purchase as few as one user license.
• $6.75 per month minimum (5 licenses) for clients with their own non-LuxSci email hosting solution.
• Licenses must be purchased for each user in your domain.
• Licenses do not need to be purchased for your aliases/forwards as long as you have a reasonable number of aliases. If you want to have more than 10 aliases for every licensed user in your account, then you will need to purchase 1 additional license for every 10 aliases -- terms subject to approval and adjustment by LuxSci management based on your situation.

If you are receiving a significant amount of email through a large number of email aliases, you may be required to purchase licenses for these aliases as if they were regular users. You will be notified ahead of time if this becomes necessary.

Pricing Details

Pricing for Premium Email Filtering is based on the number of licenses purchased and the type of filtering in use. The following prices are all "per license per month".

(a) The "Budget" version of Premium Email Filtering is contains all of the great features of "Standard" Premium Email Filtering, except for virus and worm filtering. If you have your own virus filtering software, then you can save money by not duplicating that filtering on the server side.

(b) Includes "Outbound Filtering".

(c) Includes "FailSafe" service as well as Standard Premium Email Filtering

(d) Includes "Message Continuity" service as well as Standard Premium Email Filtering

Government, Education, and Not-For-Profit Organizations: We offer a special price of $0.75/license/month for the Standard service. There is a 300-license minimum for this offer and proof of organizational qualification is required (i.e. Incorporation Documents,Federal Tax I.D., etc.). Contact sales to apply for this special price.

Bundle Pricing: Archival + Filtering

This bundle includes Premium Email Archival, Standard Premium Email Filtering, and Message Continuity services all together in one discounted package. The bundle price is a function of the archival retention period desired.

For 3-7 years of archival, you choose your retention period initially -- the price is the same for all of these retention periods.

Government, Education, and Not-For-Profit Organizations: These bundles are discounted so much that there is no additional price break for these organizations.

How To Order

Ordering a new LuxSci Account?

Simply select a package that contains the "Email Defense" Services option when you order your account, or use the "Revise Order" tab to add it on to your package. You will only be charged for one license per user in your account.

Filtering for Email Not Hosted by LuxSci?

If you have an account hosted by someone other than LuxSci, simply order our Premium Email Filteirng "Standalone" package.

Existing clients can have their domains provisioned for Email Defense service at any time. Simply:

• Use your Account Upgrade page to add a number of Email Defense licenses, equal to the number of users in the domain to be protected, to your account.
• Select the domain in question in the "Domain Management" section of your account administration page.
• Click on the "Email Defense" subpage
• Press the "Add Email Defense" option