GFI MAX MailProtection

Benefits:

Benefits for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and end-users

Email is a critical tool for all organizations. GFI MAX MailProtection™ delivers comprehensive security and continuity for your email communications.

Easy and affordable: How GFI MAX MailProtection benefits your business

With GFI MAX MailProtection you can enjoy the following benefits:

• Immediate activation – simply register for better protection and peace of mind.
• No hardware or software to download, install, or maintain.
• Most  junk mail is blocked before it reaches your network -- reducing risk, network bandwidth and load on the mail server.
• Continuity allows you to continue using email even when your own mail server is down; incoming messages are queued, and you can access and respond to those messages via the GFI MAX MailProtection web interface, at any time and with no prior preparation other than simply using the service.
• Virus outbreaks thwarted by zero-hour antivirus protection – the service can block new or emerging "zero hour" virus threats even before those threats can be detected by traditional signature-based antivirus engines.
• Better scalability and reliability than a single on-premise solution, through use of multiple systems at multiple datacenters.
• Individual control over quarantines and message digest – users may access a hosted quarantine or view a convenient, automatically emailed summary of detected spam messages, ensuring that no legitimate messages are lost.
• Highly configurable filtering options enable administrators or users to tune their spam filtering settings if they wish to do so, while allowing other customers to simply "set it and forget it".
• Prevent outbound spam or viruses from being sent from your network – protecting your organization's reputation, while helping to ensure the deliverability of valid mail.
• Outbound email filtering can also quickly alert organizations as to the presence of any infected workstations or 'zombie' machines, so that those systems can be handled appropriately.
• Minimal or no training requirements mean that an organization can be up and running immediately and with ease.
• Support – GFI MAX MailProtection’s customer service team provides responsive support to customers, from assistance with the initial activation to help with any other questions that may arise, online or by phone, 24/7.

GFI MAX MailProtection can be implemented as your organization’s email security solution, or can be part of a premium hybrid solution in combination with the on-premise GFI MailEssentials/GFI MailSecurity software or other on-premise email security systems. This hybrid solution offers a blend of on-premise and hosted solutions, providing customers with defense in depth, extremely high accuracy in spam detection through multiple complementary technologies, robust virus protection with both zero-hour antivirus protection and up to five signature-based antivirus engines, local filtering of internal messages combined with multi-stage filtering of inbound and outbound messages, and email continuity to safeguard an organization's mission-critical communications.

Benefits for partners, IT support companies, ISPs & MSPs

GFI MAX MailProtection™ allows a wide variety of VARs, MSPs, IT support companies and ISPs to inexpensively deliver high quality hosted anti-spam, antivirus and email continuity services to end customers.

Easy and affordable: How GFI MAX MailProtection benefits your business:

GFI MAX MailProtection is designed from the ground up for partners, with features including native full re-branding and hierarchical management capabilities. The service is easily and inexpensively fully brandable at all end-user touch points, to allow partners of any size to offer the service as an OEM solution.

Partners benefit from a recurring revenue model, and a tiered pricing model that allows them to achieve very substantial margins. Additionally, there are no quotas or minimum commitments for partners -- just a simple service agreement that allows IT service companies to set up and manage their customers within GFI MAX MailProtection, without intervention.

GFI is committed to its partners and provides marketing support, sales support, and other business development assistance, in addition to unlimited responsive and knowledgeable technical support by both phone and email.

Partners can implement GFI MAX MailProtection remotely and rapidly, with little or no need for ongoing maintenance of the service by the partner or by their customers.

Given the ubiquity of junk mail, the service allows GFI MAX partners to solve their customers' ongoing needs for email security by providing them with a leading hosted solution. The GFI MAX MailProtection service includes a variety of features valued by customers including:

• Highly accurate spam and threat detection, including zero-hour antivirus defense to block emerging email threats even before they are detected by traditional signature-based antivirus engines.
• Blocking of email threats before they reach the customer's network - reducing risk, network bandwidth, and mail server load.
• Defense against directory harvest and denial of service attacks.
• Integrated email continuity with automatic queuing of messages and on-demand mail service if or when a customer’s mail server or network connectivity is off-line.
• Hosted individual junk mail quarantines and individual junk mail digest messages.
• Easy-to-use web-based control panel for reporting and management.
• Outbound filtering to block spam or viruses being sent from a customer's network.
• Message logging and search.
• Use of multiple systems at multiple datacenters to provide better scalability and reliability than a single on-premise solution.
• Compatibility with any operating system(s) and any email infrastructure.
• Straightforward and inexpensive pricing, with no capital expenditure or start-up costs.

Partners can implement GFI MAX MailProtection as a multi-layered hosted anti-spam and antivirus solution, or as part of a premium hybrid solution in combination with on-premise GFI MailEssentials/GFI MailSecurity software or other on-premise email security systems.

This hybrid solution of GFI MAX MailProtection and GFI MailEssentials/GFI MailSecurity software offers a blend of on-premise and cloud-based solutions, providing customers with defense in depth, extremely high accuracy in spam detection through multiple complementary technologies, robust virus protection with both zero-hour antivirus protection and up to five signature-based antivirus engines, local filtering of internal messages combined with multi-stage filtering of inbound and outbound messages, and email continuity to safeguard an organization's mission-critical communications.

Features:

Network defense Almost all spam and email threats can be blocked before they reach the customer's network – reducing risk, freeing up network bandwidth and easing mail server load.	Continuity Customers can continue accessing, responding to, and sending email messages, even in the event of an on-premise mail server or network outage; mail is queued by the service, and customers can continue accessing or responding to those messages via the GFI MAX MailProtection control panel, even while their own mail server is off-line.
Zero-hour virus protection Block new or emerging "zero hour" virus threats before those threats can be detected by traditional signature-based AV solutions.	Inbound spam filtering Improve productivity of servers and employees by reducing the volume of junk mail getting through an existing anti-spam solution.
Outbound spam filtering Prevent inappropriate messages or attachments from being sent from a customer's network or from a specific user, thereby protecting the company’s reputation and alerting administrators as to the presence of any infected workstations or 'zombie' machines, so that those systems can be handled appropriately.	Directory harvest attack prevention Defend against spammers who attempt to deliver messages to a large number of valid and invalid email addresses at your domain.
Intuitive web-based control panel The customizable web-based control panel allows administrators and users to control the service, while providing access to quarantined messages as well as to queued mail in the event of an on-premise mail server failure.	Denial of service attack (DoS) prevention Prevent email-based DoS attacks by limiting and controlling inbound SMTP traffic from one or more given source IP addresses.
Brandable at all touch points, including its web-based control panel Distributors, partners or customers can consistently promote themselves to their user-base with an easily customizable GUI, which can reflect the desired URL, logo, and color scheme of that organization. The branding extends beyond the web-based control panel to all end-user touch points, including customizable message digests, notifications, and other communications.	Hosted individual junk mail quarantines The service can retain detected spam messages in the control panel outside of the company's network, while allowing each user to access these messages at any time to check for any genuine mail that may have been caught by the spam filters.
Individual junk mail digests Users can view a convenient, automatically emailed summary of detected spam messages, with a link next to each message to allow the user to identify and release from the quarantine any potential false positives. The digest messages can be scheduled as infrequently as once per week or as frequently as three times per day.	Configurable user preferences Administrators can set the spam filtering configuration for a given user, or can delegate the ability to do so to the individual users so that the service works for their specific needs.
Message logging and search Determine the delivery status of an inbound or outbound message, via a message search tool that includes full delivery logs for all messages in the last 10 days.	Platform-neutral Works with any operating system or mail infrastructure including Exchange, Lotus Domino, GroupWise, Zimbra, qmail, postfix, sendmail and any other SMTP server.

Screenshots:

GFI MAX MailArchive - Screenshots

Admin Delivery Log	Admin Destination Mail Servers	Admin User list	Admin Whitelist by source IP
User Aggressiveness	User Home Page	User Quarantine	User Quarantine Search
User Status Report	User Whitelist

GFI MAX MailProtection - FAQs

What is the difference between GFI MAX MailProtection and GFI MAX MailEdge?

GFI MAX MailProtection is a comprehensive hosted email security and email continuity solution. GFI MAX MailEdge is designed to be used in conjunction with an existing on-premise ant-spam/antivirus software or hardware solution, where it provides frontline email defense by blocking most unwanted email traffic before this reaches the mail server, coupled with email continuity.

Implementation

What is involved in implementing the GFI MAX MailProtection service?

All that is necessary is a change in your DNS records, so that the 'MX' (mail exchanger) entries for your domain point to GFI MAX MailProtection's systems. After that change has been made, your email will be redirected through GFI MAX MailProtection’s filters before being automatically delivered to your mail server.

What is an MX record?

A mail exchanger (MX) record identifies the location of a domain’s mail server. The record directs computers on the Internet where to send email for a specific domain. Unfortunately, the record also informs spammers of the location of a domain’s mail server. By changing the MX record, a company can re-route its inbound email to GFI MAX MailProtection, which filters messages for spam and viruses and then delivers the clean email to the company’s mail server.

Is there any downtime necessary to implement GFI MAX MailProtection's service?

There is no downtime involved in implementing GFI MAX MailProtection. The set-up process is fast, and does not affect or delay your inbound or outbound email.

How soon will we start seeing results?

Typically, GFI MAX MailProtection begins working within a few hours of the DNS change, and often within a few minutes for a significant percentage of your inbound email. In order for all of your inbound messages to be filtered, the changes to your domain's MX record must fully propagate through the Internet. The (TTL) setting within your domain’s DNS specifies how quickly these changes should take effect; TTL values generally range from one hour to 24 hours. There is no interruption to your mail flow during any of this time.

Reliability and server back-up

How reliable is GFI MAX MailProtection?

GFI MAX MailProtection's network and software architecture have been designed to handle both the rapidly growing volume of email and the heavy peak loads that are characteristic of SMTP traffic. GFI MAX MailProtection leverages multiple datacenters and has no single point of failure.  GFI also provides guarantees uptime via a service level agreement that is part of all customer agreements.

Will we experience delays in receiving messages?

No. GFI MAX MailProtection typically processes a message in less than a second. Customers do not notice any delays in the delivery of email.

What happens if our mail server goes down?

In the event that a customer's mail server is inaccessible, the GFI MAX MailProtection system acts as a message queue so that emails will be delivered to the customer once the mail server is back online. GFI MAX MailProtection uses a timing algorithm to gracefully deliver those queued messages, to ensure that the customer’s mail server is not overwhelmed with a sudden barrage of inbound mail.

Additionally, the service includes full email continuity, so that customers can access and respond to any messages in queue, via the GFI MAX MailProtection web interface.  With this capability, customers can continue using email even in the event of an emergency affecting their own email systems.

Security

How secure is the privacy of my email?

The GFI MAX MailProtection service does not affect your email's security. First of all, email itself is inherently not secure. Email messages are sent in clear, unencrypted plain text format across many networks and often through multiple mail servers before arriving at their destination. Essentially, GFI MAX MailProtection's service represents only an additional 'hop' on the Internet before email is delivered to a company's mail server.

GFI MAX MailProtection does not store or make copies of email messages, other than for a short period of time (i.e., for the length that a message may be stored in quarantine or queue).  Additionally, there are stringent security measures in place to prevent any unauthorized physical or electronic access to the GFI MAX MailProtection systems.

Spam detection and handling

How does GFI MAX MailProtection determine which messages are spam?

GFI MAX MailProtection employs an extensive range of tests on incoming messages to detect spam. These include traditional, widely used approaches for spam detection such as message authenticity checks, header analysis, message signature analysis, databases of domain names and addresses used by spammers, and whitelists and blacklists. GFI MAX MailProtection also incorporates advanced, industry-leading proprietary techniques such as real-time message source analysis, graphics analysis, and user-based message profiling.

What happens to messages that are detected as spam?

You have several options for handling the spam messages detected by GFI MAX MailProtection. Junk messages can be (1) redirected to a GFI MAX MailProtection-hosted quarantine, (2) redirected to an alternative email address such as [email protected], (3) identified as spam in the subject line and delivered to the intended recipient, or (4) deleted. These options can be configured company-wide or on a per-user basis, and can be changed at any time.

What percentage of junk email does GFI MAX MailProtection catch?

The detection rate varies by customer and is based on the email traffic patterns for a given domain, and on GFI MAX MailProtection’s aggressiveness for that domain (customers can configure how aggressive the filter should be). On average, GFI MAX MailProtection blocks over 98% of junk email and 100% of email-borne viruses.

What are whitelists and blacklists?

Whitelists are rules that allow messages to be delivered based on their 'from' email address or domain name, regardless of content. If you would like to guarantee that all messages from yourcustomer.com, for example, will not be flagged as spam regardless of what those messages contain, you can simply add that domain to your whitelist. Conversely, blacklists are rules that block messages based on the domain name or email address of the sender.  Whitelists and blacklists can also be based on the source IP address of the sending mail server, the subject line of the message, or other characteristics of the message.

Virus detection

Is GFI MAX MailProtection a substitute for our current antivirus software?

We do not recommend that customers eliminate their current virus protection, because viruses can be spread through means other than email. That said, over 90% of viruses are transmitted through email. As viruses have become more prevalent and more damaging, organizations increasingly are complementing their existing server- and workstation-based security with another layer of protection at their Internet gateway (as GFI MAX MailProtection provides) as an additional defense.

How often are GFI MAX MailProtection’s antivirus definitions updated?

GFI MAX MailProtection’s antivirus definitions are updated in near real-time. These frequent updates can protect an organization against fast-moving viruses that may not be caught with an internal antivirus solution.  Additionally, GFI MAX MailProtection incorporates a zero-hour antivirus solution that can detect email threats at the time of an initial outbreak, before those threats can be detected by traditional signature-based antivirus engines.

Compatibility

Does GFI MAX MailProtection work with Lotus Notes?

Yes. GFI MAX MailProtection works seamlessly with any mail server that you are using. As a managed service, GFI MAX MailProtection is compatible with widely used programs such as Microsoft Exchange, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Notes, as well as any other mail server software.

Does GFI MAX MailProtection support Macintosh, Linux, or Unix environments?

Yes. GFI MAX MailProtection is a service rather than a product, and no software needs to be installed on your mail server or at workstations. Therefore, GFI MAX MailProtection supports any mail server, any email client, and any operating system(s) in use at a given organization.

If my company hosts email at an external provider, will GFI MAX MailProtection work?

Yes. Many companies use an externally hosted email server, in addition to or in lieu of an internal mail server. GFI MAX MailProtection works correctly regardless of where a company's mail server or servers are located.

Integration

Do we need to integrate GFI MAX MailProtection with our existing mail server?

No - GFI MAX MailProtection will work successfully without any changes to an organization’s existing mail infrastructure and without any integration with that mail infrastructure. For ISPs and enterprise customers, we recommend that GFI MAX MailProtection’s user management and authentication functions be integrated with the customer’s infrastructure to reduce the need for any ongoing management of email accounts.

What options for integration does GFI MAX MailProtection provide?

GFI MAX MailProtection has been architected to integrate seamlessly with a wide array of infrastructures. This ensures that email addresses, aliases, and authentication information can be automatically synchronized between GFI MAX MailProtection and an organization’s internal system(s). In addition to integration via standard protocols such as LDAP and LDAPS, GFI MAX MailProtection offers a web service (available Q1 2010) that allows for programmatic domain and user management from virtually any application.

Are there any extra charges for integration?

No. GFI MAX MailProtection views integration as a means to ensure ongoing ease of management for customers, and all features related to integration are included in the standard pricing for the service.

Billing

Are there any set-up fees or implementation costs?

No. Since GFI MAX MailProtection is a managed service, there is no hardware or software to purchase and no one-time fees. There is simply a per-user price, based on the number of users who are enrolled for filtering.

How is my organization billed?

GFI MAX MailProtection is a subscription service. Customers generally are billed monthly, with pricing based on the number of email accounts using the service.

Do I have to pay for aliases?

No. Alias accounts are filtered for spam and viruses, but they are not billed.

Why GFI MAX MailProtection?

GFI MAX MailProtection  is a proven, highly effective, and low maintenance hosted email security solution that offers next-generation technology to protect thousands of organizations from junk email and viruses while also providing valuable email continuity.

GFI MAX MailProtection uses a multi-layered approach to spam filtering, combining traditional techniques such as message header analysis and heuristic rules with next-generation technologies such as real-time message source analysis and user-based message profiling. Furthermore, GFI MAX MailProtection enables administrators to-fine tune the aggressiveness of the filter on a per-person, per-group, per-domain, or per-organization basis, according to their needs. Similarly, administrators or users can choose how junk mail should be handled for any particular users or groups; options include Tag and Deliver, Quarantine, Redirect, and Delete.

GFI MAX MailProtection is the ideal solution for your business as it offers numerous advantages compared to other solutions:

• Ease of use. GFI MAX MailProtection was designed with simplicity in mind. Users do not need to install or learn any new software or hardware, nor change the way they use their email – with GFI MAX MailProtection they simply receive virus-free email and dramatically less spam.
• Zero-hour virus protection. Over 90% of viruses are transmitted through email. GFI MAX MailProtection protects an entire organization against fast-moving viruses with a number of defenses including zero-hour antivirus protection– meaning that viruses are detected in the early stage of an outbreak, before they are detected by traditional signature-based antivirus products, thus helping customers avoid the substantial costs of recovering from an email-borne virus infection.
• Continuity. In the event that the customer's mail server is temporarily down or inaccessible, GFI MAX MailProtection provides integrated message queuing as well as on-demand full email service. Customers are able to access and respond to queued messages even while their own mail server is down.
• Support. GFI MAX MailProtection’s customer service team provides responsive 24/7 support to all customers large and small, from assistance with the initial activation to help with any other questions that may arise.
• Advanced features. Organizations can choose to take advantage of GFI MAX MailProtection’s sophisticated features, such as configurable multiple daily digests of detected spam messages, full message search and delivery reports, and much more – or it can simply be left alone to run smoothly without any effort.
• No lost messages. While GFI MAX MailProtection minimizes the chances that a legitimate email message will be flagged as spam, customers can also specify multiple criteria to prevent desired messages from ever being flagged as spam. The aggressiveness of the filter can be tuned company-wide or on a per-user basis, and GFI MAX MailProtection’s automated digest messages provide users with an at-a-glance list of all junk messages caught by the system, with a one-click release mechanism for any legitimate or potentially legitimate mail – assuring that no messages are ever lost.
• Simple pricing. GFI MAX MailProtection uses a simple per-user-per-month pricing model, and allows customers to evaluate the service with a no-risk, fully functional free trial.

With GFI MAX MailProtection’s proven track record,comprehensive and highly accurate spam and virus filtering, guaranteed service-level agreement, and integrated email continuity, customers can depend on GFI MAX MailProtection for true messaging security.