Microsoft
Exchange Hosted Filtering
Introduction
Exchange Hosted Filtering incorporates multiple filters to actively help
protect businesses’ inbound and outbound e-mail from spam, viruses, phishing
scams, and e-mail policy violations.
Electronic messaging is mission-critical, but with viruses, worms,
denial-of-service attacks, spam, the need to satisfy a growing set of
government regulations, and legal actions that call for e-mail as evidence,
effective message security and management is increasingly difficult.
The service employs multilayered defenses to help block e-mail malware
from reaching your corporate gateway. In addition, the service provides both
rich tools for writing rules to help enforce corporate and regulatory
policies governing e-mail usage and disaster recovery tools to queue mail
for delivery in the event of an e-mail server outage. Exchange Hosted
Filtering is deployed over the Internet, which helps minimize up-front
capital investment, free up IT resources to focus on value-producing
initiatives, and mitigate messaging risks before they reach the corporate
network. Exchange Hosted Filtering provides a comprehensive set of SLA's
backing network performance and spam/virus filtering effectiveness.
How it Works
With just a simple MX record configuration change, Microsoft Exchange
Hosted Filtering can be up and running quickly. There is no hardware to
provision; no software to buy, install or configure; and no expensive
training required for your IT staff.
Furthermore, there is no need for you to change or modify your existing
e-mail infrastructure or even to install and maintain any new hardware or
software. The heart of Exchange Hosted Filtering is a distributed network of
data centers located at key sites along the Internet backbone. Each data
center contains fault-tolerant servers that are load-balanced from site to
site and from server to server. In the unlikely event that one data center
is unavailable, traffic can be easily routed to another data center,
minimizing the chances of any interruption to the service. Microsoft
algorithms analyze and route message traffic between data centers to help
ensure secure and timely delivery.
Solution Overview
Virus Protection Features
Exchange Hosted Filtering helps protect organizations from known viruses and
helps provide zero-day threat protection against virus outbreaks. At the
core of the service’s virus-fighting strategy are multiple, antivirus
engines that are integrated at the application programming interface level
to continually provide critical virus definition updates. Exchange Hosted
Filtering uses at least three different antivirus engines at all times with
the ability to immediately engage additional engines when acute threats
warrant additional coverage.
Spam Protection Features
Powered by multiple filtering engines and an around-the-clock team of
anti-spam experts, Exchange Hosted Filtering virtually eliminates spam from
inboxes, helping provide bandwidth for legitimate corporate use, free
precious server and storage resources, and decrease the risk of loss of
sensitive information or identity theft.
Captured spam is routed to the spam quarantine folder and can be accessed
by administrators or end users at any time through an intuitive Web-based
interface. An e-mail notification that lists newly quarantined spam can be
configured to send to each valid e-mail address. This simplifies the end
user experience by making review of spam simple and effective. Exchange
Hosted Filtering offers the spam quarantine Web-based interface and HTML
notifications in several languages.
Policy Enforcement
Exchange Hosted Filtering helps administrators enforce policies they set up
to comply with corporate policies on e-mail usage and with government
regulations, such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) Rule 17a, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD)
rules 3010 and 3110, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA). The intuitive policy rule writer makes it easy to monitor and
manage e-mail messages based on virtually any message attribute, such as
originating IP, sender, recipient, message size, file attachment, or
specific text in the subject or body.
Disaster Recovery
If a customer’s e-mail server or Internet connection becomes unavailable for
any reason, Exchange Hosted Filtering helps to ensure that no e-mail is lost
or bounced. Microsoft queues inbound e-mail in a security-enhanced
environment for up to five days. After the customer’s e-mail servers
recover, all queued e-mail is automatically forwarded in a flow-controlled
fashion. In cases of extended downtime, e-mail can be rerouted to another
server or made available through a Web-based interface.
