MailRoute e-mail Protection Service - A Detailed Overview

We have had long discussions on computer security in the past. But a few days before, while cleaning up my e-mail inbox from a flood of spams and unwanted e-mails, I found the utmost necessity to take a look at a good e-mail antispam service that will help me to keep the inbox clean. I am sure you will need it too.

MailRoute is an important e-mail protection system that has not one but three features to deny any bot or spammer to send you e-mails. MailRoute has anti-spam, greylisting and anti-virus support. The implementation takes only minutes and is risk-free.

Technology Behind MailRoute

MailRoute services by simply adjust the MX (”mail exchange”) record of your DNS servers. When an email is sent to your company, the MailRoute DNS servers analyze the health and performance of the MailRoute network and reply with the optimal choice. The email enters the MailRoute network and is analyzed, processed and passed along to its ultimate destination - typically in under one second.

1. Anti-Spam Service

MailRoute’s spam-filtering service passes all email through a multi-layered spam filtering system that identifies up to 96% of inbound spam. This processing takes place outside your network, reducing your traffic and email server processing loads. Since email is blocked at the Internet gateway, users no longer have to sort through and delete spam email in their inboxes. The accuracy is claimed to be so high that false alarm rate is too low to consider.

Features

• Multiple spam-fighting technologies catch up to 96% of spam.
• GreyListing to block spam ‘bots and zombies
• Blacklists of known spammers.
• Spam fingerprint databases.
• Lexical analysis to identify common spam words or phrases.
• Bayesian filtering.
• Distributed traffic pattern analysis identifies new spam.
• White and Blacklists let you adjust scores, depending on the sender.

Spam Processing Flexibility

• Quarantine: spam is stored in the MailRoute SpamStore® for seven days, and is accessible via a web-based interface.
• Subject line rewriting: pre-pending of a word or phrase and the SpamScore® into the message’s Subject line.
• Custom header lines are added to each message so you can select your own criteria for filtering.

• Compatible with all email systems - regardless of platform or underlying operating system.

2. GreyListing Service

Before going into Greylisting features, I feel that there is a need to throw some light on the feature itself. GreyListing looks at three key pieces of information:

1. IP address of the host trying to send email
2. Envelope sender address
3. Envelope recipient address.

Now, what greylisting does is, after reading these triplets of information from an e-mail, it simply defers the mail to reach the actual destination and superficially speaking, it sends a try again later type message to the host e-mail server. If its a legitimate e-mail server, it sends the mail again without question, but spammers, bots and others most of the times don’t have a dedicated e-mail server and can not send the mail again. They get detected and black-listed. Now, once approved, those triplets of information are never examined over that specific mail server.

Features

• Adaptive Delay Requirements: To strengthen the greylisting work-process, they vary the amount of time a server must wait before retrying by a variable amount. Otherwise, if it fixed, spammers will get past the gateway by simply sending each email twice.
• Static Whitelisting: Major ISPs and mail providers who are known to be “good citizens” are already whitelisted in the implementation.
• Automatic Whitelisting: Based on patterns showing legitimate email traffic from servers, they automatically whitelist particular IP addresses, or even blocks of addresses to remove future delays entirely.
• User Overrides: The GreyListing service can be enabled and disabled for entire domains or for individual users. But the provision for an individuals settings to override the domain settings,

3. Anti-Virus Service

A single anti-virus is not enough to prevent viruses from today’s cyber infections. That is why MailRoute uses more than one virus filtering services.

Features

• Multiple anti-virus engines protect your email.
• Updates occur every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day.
• Infected email is detected and destroyed before it reaches your network.
• No hardware or software is required.
• Implementation takes only minutes and is risk-free.

Price

MailRoute service is not free but very cheap. For an organization within 750 people, minimum monthly contract is $20 per month. To know more about MailRoute, you can contact them through sales AT mailroute DOT net.