GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP 14

GFI MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP 14 offers thousands of customers worldwide a solution to email management. With this server anti-spam solution, no client software needs to be deployed, since spam emails are caught before they reach the mail server.

The latest version of GFI MailEssentials uses not one, but two anti-spam engines to ensure a high capture rate is obtained with minimal configuration. Version 14 includes SpamRazer, an additional anti-spam engine that provides an additional layer of protection, and making GFI MailEssentials very easy to deploy and use. Besides the SpamRazer engine, GFI MailEssentials uses several other anti-spam technology modules, to ensure a 98% capture rate, whilst also reducing false positives.

Key technologies used include:

• Bayesian filtering technology
• Downloads updates to spam profile database
• Mail header analysis & keyword checking
• 3rd party DNS blacklists (DNSBL) checking
• Foreign language spam blocking
• Automatic whitelist management
• Custom blacklists

GFI MailEssentials now also includes a real-time dashboard, providing a visual of the software’s status, as well as the server’s email flow. Furthermore, the latest version includes an in-built reporting function, allowing network administrators to send a daily report illustrating how many emails were received by a user and how many emails were identified as spam and filtered.

GFI MailEssentials also includes comprehensive anti-phishing capabilities, protecting users from phishing emails by detecting and blocking them before they reach the recipient’s mailbox. Several email management tools are also added to your mail server with GFI MailEssentials, including: disclaimers, mail monitoring, Internet mail reporting, list server, server-based auto replies and POP3 downloading. GFI MailEssentials ships at the best price on the market.

Major Features:

1. NEW! – SpamRazer™: An Additional Anti-spam Engine: The latest version of GFI MailEssentials includes a new anti-spam engine, SpamRazer, which provides a second layer of protection. It has been designed for ease-of-use and, due to frequent updates, SpamRazer needs no tweaking to be fully effective in filtering the latest spam attacks such as NDR spam, CNN spam, MSNBC spam and many more. Not only will administrators benefit from out-of-the-box filtering but also they will gain protection from each new attack without the need to tweak GFI MailEssentials. With SpamRazer filtering, IP reputation filtering, Bayesian filtering and other advanced anti-spam technologies, our spam capture rate is well over 99%. GFI MailEssentials has a market-leading low rate of false positives, ensuring the safety of important emails.
   
2. NEW! – Precise Real-time Dashboard: GFI MailEssentials also ships with a precise, real-time dashboard that gives administrators a graphic view of the software’s status as well as the server’s email flow. Components shown on the dashboard are: the status of key services provided by GFI MailEssentials; statistics of email flow; blocked spam; and also POP2Exchange logging.
   
3. NEW! – Improved Performance: GFI MailEssentials hooks into Exchange server at the SMTP protocol level. Then we can determine if an email is genuine or spam before Exchange server downloads the entire email. We save you bandwidth and processing power.
   
4. NEW! – Built-in Spam Reporting: Administrators can now send a daily report to the users that shows how many emails he or she received and how many emails, identified as spam, were filtered. A snapshot of email traffic will show the end-user how much spam email was successfully captured. The report gives a full list of those emails identified and filtered.
   
5. IMPROVED! – Eliminate Hard to Catch NDR, MSNBC and CNN Spam: With spammers controlling tens of thousands of zombie machines, these large botnet armies have become one of the leading sources of spam. The Botnet/Zombie check, in GFI MailEssentials, eliminates hard to catch attachment spam such as image spam, PDF spam, Excel and ZIP spam. The attachment spam check filters this attachment spam quickly, efficiently and with a very low rate of false-positives. GFI MailEssentials uses two anti-spam filter engines and a variety of technologies such as Bayesian Filtering and IP reputation filtering to keep Non-Delivery Report (NDR), CNN spam, MSNBC spam and many more at bay.
   
6. Server-based Anti-spam and Anti-phishing: GFI MailEssentials is server-based and installs on the mail server or at the Gateway, eliminating the deployment and administrative hassle of desktop-based anti-spam and anti-phishing products. A server-side solution will prevent your server message stores from filling up with spam and eliminate the need to train your users on the creation and update of anti-spam rules.
   Bayesian filtering is widely acknowledged by leading experts and publications to be the best way to catch spam. A Bayesian filter uses a mathematical approach based on known spam and ham (valid email). This gives it a tremendous advantage over other spam solutions that just check for keywords or rely on downloading signatures of known spam. GFI’s Bayesian filter uses an advanced mathematical formula and a dataset which is custom-made for your installation: Spam data is continuously updated by GFI and is automatically downloaded by GFI MailEssentials, whereas the ham (valid email) data is automatically collected from your own outbound mail. This means that the Bayesian filter is constantly learning new spam tricks; spammers cannot circumvent the dataset used. This results in a 99+% spam detection rate, after the required automated two-week learning period. In short, Bayesian filtering has the following advantages:
   
   • Looks at the whole spam message, not just keywords or known spam signatures
   • Learns from your outbound email (ham) and therefore greatly reduces false positives
   • Adapts itself over time by learning about new spam and new valid emails
   • Dataset is unique to your company, making it impossible to bypass
   • Multilingual and international
7. Downloads Updates to Spam Profile Database: GFI MailEssentials can download updates to the Bayesian spam profile database from the GFI site, ensuring that it recognizes the latest spam and spamming techniques. GFI maintains the spam profile database by working with a number of spam collection organizations that continually supply spam samples.
   
8. Protect your users Against the Menace of Phishing Emails: GFI MailEssentials’ anti-phishing module detects and blocks threats posed by phishing emails by comparing the content of the scam with a constantly updated database of blacklisted mails, thereby ensuring all the latest phishing emails are captured. As extra protection, it also looks for typical phishing keywords in every email sent to your organization.
   
9. Sort Spam to Users' Junk Mail Folders: We give you the flexibility to choose what to do with spam. You can delete it, move it to a folder, forward the spam mail to a public email address or folder, or send it to individual customizable folders (for example, a junk mail folder) in the end-users’ inboxes. This allows users to easily review mail that has been flagged as spam.
   
10. List Server for Newsletter Lists and Discussion Lists: A list server is the best method for distributing company newsletters, since it automates the process of allowing users to subscribe and unsubscribe (required by anti-spam regulations). However, until now, list servers have been expensive and difficult to administer and they did not integrate with Exchange Server. GFI MailEssentials integrates with Exchange and can use Microsoft Access or Microsoft SQL Server as the backend. Both newsletter lists and discussion lists are supported.
    
11. Easy Tuning of the Bayesian Engine via Public Folders: Administrators can easily tune the Bayesian engine by dragging and dropping spam or ham to the appropriate public folder. GFI MailEssentials learns from the spam and ham that it picks up from these folders and further improves its spam detection rate. Administrators can control access to this feature through the use of Public Folder security.
    
12. Allow Users to Whitelist or Blacklist via Public Folders: GFI MailEssentials allows users to whitelist or blacklist senders simply by dragging and dropping the appropriate mail to a public folder. This gives users more control and reduces administration. Administrators can control access to this feature through the use of Public Folder security.
    
13. Email Header Analysis and Keyword Checking: GFI MailEssentials intelligently analyzes the email header and identifies spam based on message field information. It detects forged headers, encoded IPs, spam mutation, spam sent from invalid domains, and more. It also enables you to configure keywords to check for spam using keyword checking.
    
14. Third Party DNS Blacklists (DNSBL) Checking: GFI MailEssentials supports DNS blacklists (real time blacklists), which are databases of known spammers. If the sending mail server is on one of those lists, it marks the email as spam. GFI MailEssentials supports popular third party blacklists such as ORDB, SpamHaus, Spamcop and also enables administrators to configure custom RBL servers.
    
15. Support for Multiple Third Party SURBL Servers: GFI MailEssentials checks email content against SURBL servers. Administrators can configure multiple SURBL servers, add their own and also define priorities for which server should be checked first.
    
16. Automatic Whitelist Management Reduces False Positives: Whitelists enable you to ensure that email from particular senders or domains are never flagged as spam, permitting more stringent anti-spam rules. GFI MailEssentials includes a patent-pending automatic whitelist management tool, which adds outgoing mail recipients to your whitelist. This greatly reduces false positives, without any need for additional administration. Whitelists can also be built based on domain names, email addresses and keywords.
    
17. Instant View of Emails from New Senders: The New Senders feature provides users with an instant view of emails sent from people with whom they have not had previous contact, thereby helping users to better organize emails in their email client. If we do not identify an email as spam and yet it is not on the whitelist, then the New Senders module can move that email to a user's subfolder, for example, Inbox - NewSenders.
    
18. Eliminates Directory Harvesting: Spammers often try to guess recipient addresses by generating multiple random email addresses at a domain; they then send their spam mail to all those addresses. GFI MailEssentials checks the validity of ALL the email addresses included in the mail sent, either via a query to Active Directory or through support for LDAP, and if they are not all valid, marks the mail as spam.
    
19. Reports on Spam Filtering and Email Usage: The database-driven reporting engine allows you to create advanced reports on your inbound and outbound email. You can report on the amount of spam filtered and on rules which caught most spam. You can also generate reports on user, domain and mail server usage.
    
20. Support for SPF – the Sender Policy Framework: As most of today’s spammers spoof email addresses, it is important to be able to check whether an email is genuine or if it has been sent from a forged sending address. This can be done via the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which allows users to test whether a particular email originates from its claimed source. We offer one of the first commercial anti-spam solutions to support this framework. Our SPF module automatically checks whether the mail from a particular company was actually sent by its registered mail servers.
    
21. Set Priorities for Each Anti-spam Module: You can configure which method of capturing spam is to be given priority, and create your own hierarchical list. For example, the administrator can select for our whitelisting anti-spam feature to be applied first to all incoming mail, then Bayesian scanning, and so on.
    
22. Company-wide Disclaimer, Header and Footer text: GFI MailEssentials enables you to add disclaimers to the top or bottom of an email. Text and HTML formats are supported. You can include fields and variables to personalize the disclaimer. You can even create multiple disclaimers and associate them with a user, group or domain.
    
23. Email Monitoring: The email monitoring feature enables you to keep a central store of the email communications for a particular person or department. By configuring email to be copied to an email address, all email can be stored in an Exchange or Outlook store, making searching much easier.
    
24. Email Archiving to an SQL Database: GFI MailEssentials can archive all inbound and outbound mail to a Microsoft SQL Server database. You can search for a particular email or an entire email thread via the included web interface.
    
25. Seamless integration with Exchange Server, Lotus Domino and other SMTP servers: GFI MailEssentials integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003/2007 - it installs on the Exchange SMTP service and does not require gateway configuration. Via the SMTP protocol, it also works with Exchange 5.5, Lotus Domino and other popular SMTP/POP3 servers.
    
26. Checkmark Certified: GFI MailEssentials holds Checkmark certification from West Coast Labs and more awards.
    
27. Content Checking, Anti-virus and Anti-trojan: Get anti-virus, email content checking and anti-trojan protection for your mail server with the GFI MailDefense Suite™. GFI MailSecurity™ for Exchange/SMTP is an email content checking, exploit detection, threats analysis and anti-virus solution that removes all types of email-borne threats before they can affect your email users.
28. Whitelisting of emails by keyword
    
29. Blocking foreign language spam based on character set
    
30. Email monitoring of particular user or department email communications
    
31. Fake non-delivery reports (NDRs)
    
32. Personalized server-based auto replies with tracking number
    
33. POP3 downloader
    
34. Web interface for searching email archive
    

Enhancements:

• SpamRazer™ Engine: A second anti-spam engine has been added to the GFI MailEssentials spam filters to further improve spam capture rate and the ability to block new trends in spam.
• Quick Look Dashboard: A new dashboard application has been added to GFI MailEssentials, which provides improved processing logs and visual indicators for email processing and spam capture.
• Directory Harvesting running at SMTP Protocol Sink: Directory Harvesting can now be set to run at SMTP procotol sink level, allowing blocking of spam before its content is downloaded.
• Spam Email Digest: A daily-weekly-monthly report can be sent by email to administrators and individual recipients that includes a summary of spam received.
• Support for 64-bit IIS: GFI MailEssentials 14 now supports deploying on IIS in both Windows 2003 x64 and Windows 2008 x64.

Requirements:

• Windows Server 2008 (x86 Edition & x64), Windows Server 2003 Standard/Enterprise (x86 Edition) or Windows 2000 Professional/Server/Advanced Server (Service Pack 1 or later).
• Support for MS SBS 2003 & 2008 (MS SBS not required).
• .NET framework 1.1 or later.