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The service, which pre-filters e-mail before it reaches the customer's gateway, is 98 percent effective at eliminating spam and viruses and produces few false positives, according to Netriplex.

The 24/7 service uses multiple gateway filters that are updated every few seconds for known spam signatures. Each inbound e-mail is compared to the SPAMsig database. The company claimed an average delay of less than one second on each e-mail.

E-mail messages that contain viruses are quarantined, and senders are notified. The VIRUSsig network is updated with the most recent virus definitions every few minutes. The virus scanner unpacks and scans archive files as well as uncompressed ones.

If the customer's mail server becomes unavailable, Netriplex stores e-mail for up to seven days, after which it can forward to another location. Storage is only for disaster recovery purposes, and customer e-mail is deleted after that period. Netriplex does not read, copy, distribute, or alter e-mail beyond filtering for unwanted content.

Netriplex anti-spam is rapidly deployed by modification of the MX records for the domain. Customer administrators control the aggressiveness of the service, as well as many mail management properties for inbound and outbound mail and virus scanning. The Web interface includes controls for blacklisting, whitelisting, image management, attachment management, message stamping, corporate policy enforcement and other features. A reporting utility shows statistics related to the customer domain.

Quarantined spam can be viewed, and the administrator can receive daily e-mail reports on what has been caught.

Jonathan Hoppe, chief technology officer, said that offering the free service should help increase Netriplex's global e-mail volume and thus give access to more spam, allowing the system to refine itself further.

The free service covers one domain and 5,000 inbound e-mails per month to unlimited e-mail addresses, uses McAfee virus scanning, and offers e-mail support during business hours. More extensive services - covering more domains and incoming e-mails -- are available for monthly fees.

We safely remove up to 98% of incoming spam so that it never reaches your inbox. Our spam filter is a triple-edged sword, protecting you against corporate productivity loss, infrastructure consumption, and liability resulting from unsolicited commercial email.

We analyze each and every email during processing to identify spam before it's delivered to you. Regular updates to our analysis tools provide continuous and up-to-date protection as older methods are improved and new techniques are identified.
 

Spam Protection Benefits

• Increase corporate productivity through efficient email usage
• Avoid potential legal issues arising from the creation of a 'hostile work environment' when message content is offensive to certain employees
• Increase security and safeguard your reputation by preventing spammers from hacking into your server and surreptitiously using it for spam delivery
• Reduce network resource drain, including Internet bandwidth usage, mail server processing cycles, and message storage capacity

Spam Protection Features

Unsolicited email is identified and quarantined using the following advanced security techniques:

• Pattern Matching
  Pattern matching classifies and describes a message in terms of its content. Our spam filter examines each incoming message’s layout and organization to determine if it contains common spam characteristics. Regular expressions provide the efficiency and speed required to produce real-time matches while also making it easy to add your own customized patterns. Our advanced pattern-matching engine simultaneously applies thousands of algorithms to all incoming messages during a single pass. The results of these security measures determine a probability rating, according to which the appropriate action is assigned. Pattern schemes are updated regularly to identify the newest and most effective quarantine tactics.
   
• Spam Definitions
  Spam definitions employ patterns that are used to identify specific instances of spam. In particular, they detect multiple instances of messages considered sufficiently similar to be one and the same (for example, hoaxes and chain letters that may otherwise be difficult to detect). Our spam definitions are updated regularly to ensure the greatest efficiency.
   
• Heuristic Analysis
  Heuristic analysis uses a series of internal tests to determine the likelihood that any given message is indeed spam. Each of these tests is weighted with a point value to reduce false positive results. The total spam probability is then examined to determine an overall score. A mapping function then assigns the appropriate action to each message. Actions undertaken include: rejecting, redirecting, logging, or annotating offending messages.
   
• RBLs
  Real-time blackhole lists (RBL) consist of a compilation of networks that either allow spammers to use their systems, or have not taken action to prevent spammers from abusing their systems. Our spam filter compares the IP address of each email sending machine against the RBL. If a match is found, the incoming email is automatically rejected.
   
• Whitelist
  A Whitelist consists of pre-defined safe senders’ IP addresses that are allowed to pass through our filters unchecked. Our network administrators can set up your list to recognize wanted mailing list traffic and opt-in marketing messages that may otherwise be misclassified.

Anti-Spam Service: Why use it? Introduction and Article Index

Everyone who regularly uses e-mail for communications is familiar with the problem of unsolicited, unwanted e-mail (spam). To help members of the Ohio State University community better manage this problem for their own e-mail communications, the Office of Information Technology has installed an Anti-Spam service (CanIT Spam Trap from Roaring Penguin) on the central e-mail system (osu.edu).

Note: The anti-spam system should be used with caution. As with any filtering technology there is a risk of losing wanted e-mail. Please follow the set-up instructions carefully.

Why You Probably Want to Use the Central Anti-Spam Service

Using the service can cut spam to a negligible volume. This saves time and effort in locating desired e-mail messages as well as eliminating the need to spend time deleting the unwanted e-mail. Also, since the unwanted e-mail never gets to your mailbox, it doesn't count against your central e-mail system storage space allocation (quota) , but still gives you the option to review the filtered e-mail for any messages that might be wanted.

Other considerations: If you use the OSU Webmail client to read your e-mail, the Spam Trap is the only spam filtering available to you. Training the system to filter spam can help you avoid the need to deal with unwanted messages even if you check your e-mail using OSU Webmail only on the weekends or for travel.

Since everybody has a different definition of which e-mail is unwanted, the system is trained by each individual to meet their own needs. After about a week of training (it takes a few minutes each day), the system weeds out a large portion of the unwanted e-mail. The longer the training continues, the more effective the program becomes for each person.
 

How It Works

The CanIt Spam Trap scans e-mail messages before they reach the central e-mail server. As part of this scan, each message is tagged with a "score" based on how likely the message is to be spam. By default, the Spam Trap is set only to tag messages with this score. Each user turns on the Trap for their e-mail, and customizes the settings for their own needs.

Each user of the system has a choice for how they want to use the Trap. Options:

• Set up and train the CanIT Spam Trap on the central system to stop spam from being delivered to your mailbox. Step by step instructions as well as recommended settings are available in the following articles:
  • Getting Started: Turning on the Service
  • Reviewing Trapped Messages
  • Training the Filter
  • Using the Message Voting Feature
  • Turning On/Off E-mail Notifications
  • Glossary of Terms
  • Advanced Troubleshooting and Diagnostics
  • Benefits of Low, Medium, and High in Anti-Spam While Continuing to Use Advanced Features
  • Descriptions of the Anti-Spam Service Simplified Interface Settings
  • Opting-Out/Disabling
  • Anti-Spam Service and LEFS
  • Anti-Spam Turned on Automatically for Students
  • Faculty / Staff Using Simple Interface
  • Whitelisting and Blacklisting Senders/Domains/Hosts
• If you are working with a non-standard username (one that is not in the format lastname.#, instructions for Working with Organizational and Other Special E-mail addresses and Usernames will provide instructions for working with these exceptions.
• Use the scores to set rules in e-mail client anti-spam programs to filter spam within the client. If you would prefer to use the Central E-mail Anti-Spam rankings with an e-mail client (that can be used to set up filtering based on the scores), the following articles will help with set-up. This option is available if you use Eudora, Outlook XP/2003, or Apple Mail.
• Ignore it, and continue to receive all e-mail (including spam) addressed to you (possibly setting rules in your e-mail client to filter some messages to a special folder).

The Anti-Spam service can be used by individuals who forward e-mail off the central system. (Example: lastname.#@osu.edu forwards to username@collegemail.edu). The steps for setting up and using the Anti-Spam service are the same as for an individual who reads their e-mail on the central e-mail server. Note, however, that in this case only e-mail sent to lastname.#@osu.edu will be filtered through the Anti-Spam service (before filtering to the service (departmental e-mail, Internet Service Provider, etc. where e-mail is read. E-mail sent directly to username@collegemail.edu will not.