Protect your messaging infrastructure from internal and external threats with accurate, multi-layered filtering technologies.

Message Protect incorporates multiple filters to actively help protect businesses’ inbound and outbound e-mail from spam, viruses, phishing scams, and e-mail policy violations. The service employs multilayered defenses to help block e-mail malware from reaching your corporate gateway. In addition, the service provides both rich tools for writing rules to help enforce corporate and regulatory policies governing e-mail usage and disaster recovery tools to queue mail for delivery in the event of an e-mail server outage.

Message Protect is deployed over the Internet, which helps minimize up-front capital investment, free up IT resources to focus on value-producing initiatives, and mitigate messaging risks before they reach the corporate network. Message Protect provides a comprehensive set of SLAs backing network performance and spam/virus filtering effectiveness.

How it Works

With just a simple MX record configuration change, Message Protect can be up and running quickly. There is no hardware to provision; no software to buy, install or configure; and no expensive training required for your IT staff.

Furthermore, there is no need for you to change or modify your existing e-mail infrastructure or even to install and maintain any new hardware or software. The heart of Exchange Hosted Filtering is a distributed network of data centers located at key sites along the Internet backbone. Each data center contains fault-tolerant servers that are load-balanced from site to site and from server to server. In the unlikely event that one data center is unavailable, traffic can be easily routed to another data center, minimizing the chances of any interruption to the service. Microsoft algorithms analyze and route message traffic between data centers to help ensure secure and timely delivery.

The SLAs

• 99.999% Network Up-Time
• 100% protection against all known email viruses
• Capture of at least 95% of all inbound spam email
• False positive commitment of less than 1 in 250,000 emails

Unwanted email (spam) has evolved from simply being a nuisance to become a significant problem. Spam affects employees' productivity, it introduces potential legal liability, and there are real costs to the recipients and their corporations. By some estimates, the amount of spam will triple over the next few years.

Message Protect's spam solution has distinguished itself as a leading remedy for eliminating spam in the enterprise and leverages the benefits of the MEHS's advanced network architecture, ensuring that filtered messages are delivered reliably and securely. Message Protect utilizes four layers of protection to analyze each piece of email and to detect and act on suspected spam.

Reputation Database

Message Protect uses a proprietary Reputation Database managed by Microsoft. It does not use commercial blacklists such as MAPS and ORBZ/S. Most commercial and public blacklists follow a "guilty until proven innocent" approach, which frequently blocks email from legitimate senders. The blacklist contains only the addresses of the most egregious spammers on the Internet. While conservative, this blacklist can immediately block nearly 10 percent of a customer's inbound spam.

Fuzzy Fingerprinting

Messages not blocked by blacklisting are fingerprinted to detect matches with known spam message characteristics. Fuzzy fingerprinting technology leverages knowledge gained from filtering mail for the entire customer base. The fingerprinting database aggregates data from all spam blocked by the system allowing the fingerprinting process to become more intelligent and refined as more mail is processed.

Rules-based scoring

Message Protect assigns scores to messages based on more than 20,000 rules that embodies and define characteristics of spam and legitimate email. Points are added to the score if a message contains characteristics of spam; and points are subtracted if it contains many characteristics of legitimate email. When a message's score reaches a defined threshold, it is flagged as spam.

Message characteristics we evaluated and scored include:

• Formation of headers (i.e., Message-ID, Received, random characters)
• Originating mail server
• Originating mail agent
• From and SMTP From address

Spam Treatment

Most customers choose to quarantine messages identified as spam outside their network. Quarantined messages are stored and deleted after 15 days. Customers can review quarantined messages and retrieve improperly blocked messages through a Web-based tool.

Unlike most competitors, Message Protect has a very low incidence of blocking legitimate email - less than one for every 250,000 emails received (less than 0.00004 percent).

As an alternative to quarantining messages, MEHS also allows spam to be sent through to customers. When Message Protect forwards spam, it can modify the message to flag it for internal review. Modifications can include:

• Inserting an X-header for filtering inside the perimeter
• Inserting a new subject line message (i.e., < This is spam >)
• Directing spam to an internal SMTP mailbox

Before the explosion of Internet usage and email traffic in the late 1990s, the vast majority of viruses were spread by infected floppy disks or other relatively slow moving methods of transmission. With email becoming ubiquitous in corporate environments and elsewhere, viruses and other harmful files have the ability to spread at lightning speed. Some estimate that today viruses, worms, and Trojan horses can spread and propagate at a rate of tens of thousands of copies per hour. At this rate, there is precious little time to update desktop and gateway anti-virus systems to ensure corporate networks and systems are protected.

Our anti-virus solution leverages the benefits of the MEHS network architecture, ensuring that messages are delivered reliably, securely, and free of harmful content. The following diagram illustrates how the system works:

Multi-Engine Virus Scanning

Message Protect employs a layered approach to virus scanning. While many companies install and run anti-virus software on users' desktops and gateway servers, the fast-moving nature of virus transmission today requires a more rapid response than desktop and gateway solutions can deliver.

Because stopping viruses is especially time critical, Anti-Virus Vendors often work with Microsoft at every stage in the development of virus remedies. As a consequence, Message Protect typically deploys protection from new viruses hours before new signatures are publicly released. Additionally, Microsoft is able to provide immediate protection prior to the release of any anti-virus engine update by using its powerful policy and attribute blocking capability to block specific kinds of attachments or filter email based on specific characteristics of a message.

Outbound Virus Scanning

In addition to securing inbound email and ensuring viruses do not enter the corporate network, Message Protect also scans outbound email for viruses to protect the companies with whom your organization communicates. A company's reputation is important, and being the source of a damaging virus, worm, or Trojan horse that infects the systems of customers, partners, and suppliers can do harm to that reputation.

Policy Enforcement and Attribute Blocking services allows companies to automatically monitor outbound and inbound email and stop sensitive and inappropriate messages from entering and leaving the corporate network.

Email has become a key method of communication in most enterprises. While a great productivity and communication tool, email opens enterprises to certain risks and necessitates oversight and monitoring to ensure security and efficiency. For example, when electronic documents are sent outside the company, email heightens the risk of disclosing proprietary information or a confidentiality breach, resulting in potential legal liabilities.

Further, specific laws govern communication in various industries, including financial services and healthcare. In the USA the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, SEC rule 17a, NASD rules 3010 and 3110, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulate security, privacy, and non-disclosure for various forms of communication, including email. For example, NASD rule 3110 requires companies in the investment banking and securities business to monitor all email communications for compliance.

Even when there is no regulatory concern, policy enforcement of inbound and outbound communication makes good business sense. A corporation's most important asset is its intellectual property, and it is critical to protect it through policy management and enforcement.

The policy enforcement functionality allows messages to be blocked by:

• Specific words and phrases in the subject and body of the message
• Message size
• Number of recipients
• Specific To: and From: addressee
• Specific domain(s)

CALL US AT 866-714-0933

If you are interested in knowing more about the service or would like to purchase a MP: Message Protect service plan, please contact Silo Networks at 866-714-0933.

NO MIMIMUMS, NO LONG TERM COMMITMENTS

Silo Networks understands that small businesses need to be agile and able to make quick decision about company direction. That's why unlike some providers, Silo Networks does not require a minimum number of users to access the service.

SERVICE REQUIREMENTS

To run this service effectively, you will need:

• A registered domain name to access the service.