How it Works – EMS Email Security™
EMS Email Security provides best-in-class email protection against spam, viruses, and unwanted content without the daily manual maintenance required by alternative solutions.
EMS uniquely synchronizes user information and allows rapid deployment
EMS Email Security is built on the unique Dell MessageOne™ Managed Services Platform™ that synchronizes contact and user information with your existing systems. Directory synchronization is leveraged to fully automate user management, to automatically add personal contacts to safe lists, and to ensure that invalid addresses are blocked before they reach your servers. By installing EMS and simply resetting your MX record, EMS Email Security synchronizes with your primary system and begins filtering.
As each email message passes through the simple message transport (SMTP) protocol, Email Security processes the message through a task-specific application module that determines whether or not the message may put your organization’s network at risk:
- An intelligent processing hub which resolves the handling of messages based on a set of configured rules and classifies the message for disposition.
- An email firewall module that filters messages for envelope criteria, content, and message attributes and compares the message content to dictionaries and assigns weights.
- A virus protection module that uses antivirus engines to scan the message and its attachments.
- A spam detection module that checks the connection information, sender, recipient or recipients, domain, sub-domain, header, and body information of the message. This module includes the Proofpoint, MLX Engine™, which examines over 350,000 attributes of each message and scores a message for spam, as well as a pornographic spam detection module that also examines and scores the message.
Effectively block spam and viruses
EMS Email Security uses multiple spam filtering engines, including Proofpoint’s MLX technology, to provide the highest rate of spam and virus elimination with the fewest false positives. Alternative products classify a high percentage of message traffic as unknown, not sure if the message is spam or valid. This results in a large volume of unwanted content delivered to user mailboxes. EMS doesn’t rely on signatures or fingerprinting techniques and is far superior to alternative statistical techniques. Connection level data-points, sender IP addresses, message headers, message structure, message context, and message image content are checked for 350,000 threat attributes to stop even never before seen attacks.
EMS also uses multiple virus filtering engines, including the industry leading F-Secure® engine, to efficiently scan messages and attachments for potentially malicious code. Because virus protection is fully integrated into EMS, each message is opened just once and virus scanning is performed in parallel with other forms of message analysis to minimize latency and optimize performance.
The MLX Engine™ provides the most advanced anti-spam solution available by combining machine learning with proven anti-spam methods, such as Bayesian techniques, heuristics, and message characteristic analysis. As a message’s characteristics are fed into the MLX Engine, classifiers output a set of balanced weights for each spam attribute. These weights provide a statistical representation of how likely each attribute indicates spam during the final message classification process. The MLX Engine receives frequent, automatic updates, based on the latest spam-detection research.
For each message, spam detection begins at the IP layer, goes through the envelope and header layers, and into the message body. Using the detected attributes, the MLX Engine uses appropriate classifiers to calculate the probability that the message is spam. The result of this calculation is the message’s spam score. The software uses the spam score to determine the message’s spam classification and, based on the classification, decides what action to take with the message. The scores used to determine the spam classification are configurable. The MLX Engine also filters messages for pornographic content and assigns each message an “adult content” score.
Personal quarantines and safe/block lists
Email that does not meet spam-safe criteria is routed to global quarantines for administrators and optionally to personal quarantines for end-users. Users can easily view and release quarantined email through a daily digest delivered to their email accounts without the need for a separate login or user ID. Active Directory integration ensures that users get a single digest regardless of the number of their system aliases. End-users are able to tune their spam controls with personal safe/block lists accessed via Outlook or through an easy-to-use web interface.
There are two types of safe senders lists: the Global Safe Senders List that applies to everyone in the organization and personal Safe Senders Lists. Administrators control the Global Safe Senders List, end-users control personal Safe Senders List and can add their own list addresses of people, organizations, and mailing lists from which they want to receive messages. If a sender's address is included in a safe senders list, EMS Email Security filters messages from that sender for viruses or inappropriate content, but it does not filter the messages for spam.
There is also a Global Blocked Senders List and a Personal Blocked Senders List. These lists contain addresses of people, organizations, and mailing lists from which you do not want to receive email messages (spam) and end-users can block addresses from which they do not want to receive email.
Eliminate manual administration
EMS Email Security eliminates manual administration of user lists and provides a unified administrative interface for rapid administration and customization. EMS Email Security protects your network with zero maintenance as the only on-demand service with fully automated configuration and optimization. Administrative overhead and the potential for configuration errors are minimized through automated maintenance, user synchronization, virus signature management, and automated and self-adapting spam engine management provided by the Dell MessageOne Managed Services Platform.
The Dell MessageOne Managed Services Platform consists of minimal client side software installed at your site and the Dell MessageOne global network of top-tier disaster recovery centers. Linux based, this architecture is immune to the viruses and malware that plague Windows® based systems and provides many advantages over on-premise and other on-demand services.
- User information and all relevant directory changes are automatically synchronized with EMS including aliases, distribution lists, and the adding or removing of users
- Single day deployment
- Known cost structure for deployment and operations
- Enterprise-class security
- Automated provisioning
- 24/7 Live support
- Low TCO
