E-mail protection service

E-mail has become an important working tool, an integral part of company’s everyday performance effectiveness. Along with this role, the amounts of spam and security threats have grown. This negatively affects the  performace of every company:
 

-  employers spend much time reading and deleting unwanted messages;
-  spam rapidly fills e-mail inboxes, therefore the need for additional investment in hardware occurs and the risk of failure to receive important messages increases;
-  company’s computers, IT systems and internet channel are extra loaded and that slows down the activities of the whole company;
- viruses, that find their way to company’s network and employees’ computers, slow down or completely stop the operations;
-  the probability of information theft, corruption or deletion increases.
 

Part of the companies solve these issues by applying costly technological security tools in e-mail systems or user computers. Cheaper or freeware tools do not provide sufficient protection and the administration of such tools requires a lot of human resources. In addition, practice shows that such solutions additionally load company’s IR infrastructure and slows down its operations. Therefore we suggest to solve the above-listed challenges by using bridge2cloud e-mail protection service, that ensures protection from spam and e-mail borne viruses.

 

UNIQUENESS ON THE MARKET
 
-  Service. Solution is provided as Software as a Service.
-  Enterprise level solution. The service is designed based on the technologies of one of the leading company’s in this field „Ironport Systems“. Company „Ironport Systems“ has been recently joined to “Cisco Systems”, the global manufacturer of computer network equipment.

FUNCTIONALITY
 
Firstly, e-mails are sent to the diagnostic system, which cleans infected messages and blocks unwanted messages. After a few milliseconds-long inspection, wanted and safe messages are forwarded to the addressee.

Each message is checked in several ways:
-  Sender reputation filter. If sender is added to spammer lists, the messages from this sender are instantly blocked. Already in this stage 80 percent of unwanted spam messages are rejected.
-  Content filter. The content filter checks the message content and its structure. With this filter 98 percent of spam messages with content containing an image are rejected. 
-  Link filter. Since most of the electronic address contains links inviting to visit one or another site, this filter rejects messages containing links to malicious sites.
-  Attachment filter. This filter is intended to reject the virus infected documents so they do not access the company’s internal network.
- Suspicious messages filter. Based on the information gathered by global SenderBase network that records suspiciously big traffic generating senders, suspicious messages are temporarily diverted into quarantine. After inspection the messages are forwarded to the company’s internal network. Messages that do not meet inspection criteria fall into temporary quarantine. They can be sent to the recipient or deleted if needed.

 

IMPLEMENTATION EXAMPLE
 

There are 30 employees working in a publishing company. A couple of years ago Microsoft Exchange e-mail and collaboration system has been installed. The system is used by all the employees of the company. E-mail is a very important tool for the operation of the company: orders are received by e-mail as well as coordinated print-ups. Working with clients is very dynamic and requiring quick response to inquiries and requests. 

Standard Microsoft Exchange tools were used for spam and virus protection. Those tools blocked part of the spam, but employees, whose email addresses are provided in the company’s website, received about 50 spam messages daily. Antivirus software was also installed to computers, but most of the employees would turn them off as the software was slowing down their computers. For this reason, one of the computers was infected with a virus that has spread to other computers and systems and company’s operations were disrupted for several days.

After this incident, the company planned to acquire specialized e-mail protection software. However, the plans were discarded due to considerable investments needed for equipment and personnel competency training. The alternative decision was made and the company procured bridge2cloud e-mail protection service. Now employees no longer need to spend time reading and deleting spam messages and company’s IT administrators that the computers are protected from e-mail borne viruses. Also, e-mail protection functions in e-mail system were turned off and the system started to operate faster, the employee efficiency increased. The service is billed monthly, and the price depends on how many users use the service.

 

BENEFITS
 
Cost optimization. Procuring this solution as a service it is no longer necessary:
-  to invest in hardware or software;
-  to administrate and support the solution;
-  to waste time and energy deleting spam messages.
Reduced load on IT resources. As unwanted and virus infected messages do not even get into company’s network, the IT resources (servers, computers and internet connection) are nor loaded with unnecessary work and service users receive a “clean” e-mail traffic.
Increased productivity. Employers save time because they do not need to read and delete spam messages and the protection from harmful viruses reduces downtime in case of IT infrastructure or computer disruption. 
Reliable protection.  The service ensures that more than 98 percent of e-mail spam will be blocked and won’t get in to e-mail system and the service statistics shows that the chance to have mistaken valuable e-mail for a spam message is one message out of million.

 

FAQ
 

Using content filter more than 98 percent of spam messages containing images are rejected. Does this mean that .jpg, .jpeg, .tif and other graphic formats can not be sent and receives?
The service allows sending all types and formats of graphical material. However, the advanced protection mechanisms provide protection from spam based not only text, but also graphic information. This increases the effectiveness of protection.
 

What does “temporary quarantine” mean? Who informs about messages stored in quarantine?
The diversion to temporary quarantine means that potentially harmful message or spam is not sent to user but is not deleted either. In this case the user via e-mail is informed about the message, can review its contents and approve or reject a message.

Is it difficult to start using this service? How will it affect my IT infrastructure?
You can start using the service the very next day after ordering. You will not need to make any changes to your existing IT infrastructure. Our specialists will make all the necessary changes and customizations. Your employees will continue using e-mail as if nothing had changed. Just now they will not receive spam or virus infected messages. 

The company is still growing. At this stage does it make sense to procure a service instead of in-house solution?
Since you are growing, you are in a vey dynamic state and it is very difficult to predict the necessary IT resources. Meanwhile, the service is charged monthly. Every time you would pay only for the users who have used the service during the given month. In this way the company will not be loaded with unnecessary financial commitments.
 

I do not have sufficient IT knowledge. Will I be able to use the service and to cope with the difficulties encountered?
You do not have to be IT professional. Leave this area to us. We will activate the service and, in case of any problem, will provide with professional advice and assistance.