Virus and Spam Scanning System

Reliability and speed

The Virus and Spam Scanning System is custom designed to handle very high volumes of email using multiple servers clustered together to form Scanning Nodes and multiple Scanning Nodes. The system significantly reduces unwanted emails and in many cases has been demonstrated to almost completely eliminate all spam.

The multi server architecture allows for very fast scanning of emails and means that even if there is a server failure, or even an entire node becomes unavailable, the service will continue to operate without interruption.

How it works

• Viruses are filtered using a virus scanning engine which is updated automatically every 15 minutes throughout the day. Unwanted files are filtered based on file types e.g. executables.

• All emails also pass through a second scanning phase which uses different software to repeat the virus scanning phase - this ensures the most thorough scans possible.

• The Spam Scanning system consists of multiple layers of filtering technologies, white/black lists, RBL lists and other techniques which we continually monitor, refine and improve.

• The Spam Scanning system uses individual language settings and a separate Bayes database for each domain protected by the service. Over time the Bayes database builds a unique profile of the type of emails the domain receives, learning about which are spam and which are legitimate. This and the combination of individual language settings leads to a far more accurate and tailored solution.

Effectiveness

No such service can ever be 100% guaranteed and we also advise customers to consider our service as part of an overall, multi layered security strategy, although experience with spam blocking effectiveness to date shows that for a typical small office receiving 80 spam emails a day, approximately 1 message per week may go undetected, virtually eliminating the problem. For example a customer wrote to us to report an overnight reduction from 20,000 spam emails per week down to only 25 after switching on the system. They achieved further reductions over time as the system built their customised mail profile.

Control Panel

Resellers have access to an on-line control panel which allows them to customise spam and virus settings according to their requirements.