Zérospam

Businesses are as different as individuals. In some companies, computers exchange automated email. Others process forms that people fill out on their Web sites. Many firms regularly communicate with partners, customers or providers on other continents. Some executives are so concerned that they might not receive all their email that they prefer not to have their messages filtered. Others do not want to see any special offers, even if they are from one of their own suppliers. That is why the best anti-spam solutions provide users with control tools that allow them to tailor the solution to their specific needs. The ZEROSPAM solution has a central quarantine and management console and customers receive weekly statistical reports.

The quarantine is a space where filtered email is stored so that they can be checked by a designated administrator. As no anti-spam solution is infallible, it is important to be able to access quarantined email in order to retrieve any legitimate messages that may have been blocked (usually due to substandard sending procedures).

The ZEROSPAM solution has a central quarantine. All content-filtered email for a given domain are found in this quarantine. Why do we use a central quarantine? The answer is simple: so users are not tempted to waste the time they just saved. Because ZEROSPAM has such a low false positive rate, it is able to use a central quarantine. In fact, after a break-in period of a few days, customers consider it as a trash can and only check it if they have good reason to believe that a legitimate email is stuck there. Messages contained in ZEROSPAM's quarantines are automatically deleted after seven days.

The ZEROSPAM quarantine can be checked in two different ways: using a Web interface or by configuring an IMAP or POP3 account in your messaging software.

You have absolutely no control over how people send you email. However, the methods used by some senders make their messages appear highly suspicious and cause your anti-spam solution to flag them as undesirable. That is why it is important to be able to specifically authorize email from certain individuals or domains. ZEROSPAM allows you to do so using a central management console, a tool that also provides you with several other advantages.

ZEROSPAM's management console has five lists.

Senders whitelist

The first list is the senders whitelist, which is used to exclude certain incoming email addresses or entire domains from being filtered.

Senders blacklist

The second list is the senders blacklist. This list is mainly used to block promotional announcements, mailing list messages, and email from known malicious individuals. It is absolutely pointless to use this list to try to block spam.

Recipient whitelist

The third box on ZEROSPAM's management console is the recipient whitelist. It allows you to exclude certain users from being filtered. In fact, some people do not trust filtering solutions and prefer to receive spam rather than take the chance that a legitimate email will be quarantined. It is essential that you input your EDI system's addresses on the list of non-filtered addresses so that important messages sent to this system are always received.

IP whitelist

The fourth box is the IP whitelist. If you have a Web application or reliable source that automatically sends messages to some of your users, you can make sure that messages are received by the recipients by entering the sending servers' IP addresses on that list.

List of valid recipients

The fifth box on ZEROSPAM's management console is the list of valid recipients. If your email server cannot automatically exclude email targeting invalid addresses on your domain, you can use this list to indicate all your valid email addresses. This feature enables ZEROSPAM to block all email aimed at non-existent email addresses. If used, it is of vital importance to keep this list up to date, as all email aimed at users not on this list will be rejected.

ZEROSPAM's management console may be checked using a Web interface.

The centralized management of ZEROSPAM's quarantine and management console has several advantages:

• It completely frees up users, as they no longer have to deal with spam or management tasks.
• Management by competent administrators ensures the optimal use of tools and a better understanding of the system's features.
• It allows you to exclude or include certain types of messages for all users.

With ZEROSPAM's effective solution, a single administrator can easily manage the central quarantine and management console, even if you have thousands of users.

ZEROSPAM's customers receive two weekly reports. The first one specifies the total number of envelope-filtered spam messages during a given week. In addition, it lists the specific anti-spam detection rules used and indicates the number of spam messages blocked according to each. This report also specifies the number of quarantined emails (the number of content-filtered email), the number of legitimate emails forwarded, and the number of viruses intercepted. It presents a clear picture of ZEROSPAM's filtering effectiveness and clients then realize the huge volume of spam they are not getting. The second report provides more details about blocked viruses, worms and phishing emails. It has a detailed, enumerated list of each malicious email that was received during a given week and indicates how many were intercepted. It also lists the email addresses for each type of high-risk spam received. This report allows you to quickly identify the users targeted by malicious content and assess your company's vulnerability to phishing.