Secure Mail Gateway

Plagued by viruses? Spam on the increase? Well, sad to say but you're nothing special. No Internet-related event has been asimportant, costly or damaging as the rise of rogue emails. Literally all over the World, inboxes are filling up with scams, 'phish', porn and promises of riches that no-one asked for. Worse still, some email contain worms that can turn your PC into a broadcast station for more spams (so-called 'Zombies').

70% of all emails are unwanted or potentially damaging

Enter our service. SMG is a practical, affordable and effective solution to the rise of rogue emails. Here's how it works...

Normally emails are delivered directly to your SMTP server (e.g. Exchange). With the SMG service, your email is delivered to our data centre first. These systems detect spam and virus-infected email and remove or tag them (your choice). We then deliver the email to your server as normal.

That's it.

No, really. It is.

This service requires no new hardware, software, training or maintenance. The only required outlay is our license fee, which you will find to be extremely competitive.

We'll even virus-scan your outbound email if you wish. At no extra charge!

System Requirements

SMG is a service, not software or hardware. We are compatible with anything that can accept an SMTP feed. You need an Internet accessible SMTP email server such as Exchange or Notes and that's it.

Key Features

Here's what every SMG subscriber gets...

Spam Protection from SpamAssassin

No mystical proprietary systems here. We have chosen SpamAssassin as the best defence against against spam. SpamAssassin is a community-developed open source project that has lead the field in the fight against spam. We are a proud part of this community.

Virus Protection from Kaspersky Labs

Kaspersky have developed an excellent unix-based implementation of their award-winning anti-virus software. It's performance and accuracy make it an ideal partner for SMG.

One-Time Configuration

Once SMG is set up, you need do nothing. We handle all updates for you, making sure you have the latest protection available. No monitoring or maintenance is required.

Control Panel

We offer a range of options so that we handle rogueemails the way you want us to. Want the spam delivered with a tag? Fine. Want it deleted? Fine. There are a range of options at your disposal. We also provide a range of useful diagnostics that you can use to test the system.

Outbound Virus Protection

All subscribers get the option of free outbound scanning. In the event a virus or worm is introduced to your organisation, you can be sure it won't be passed on to business partners or customers.

Feature List:

• Filter detects spam and virus-infected email and forwards 'clean' email to a server of your choosing
• Fully online - Instant provisioning (subject to MX records)
• Supports up to 50 different domain names at no extra cost
• Diagnostics Service for filter testing
• Online server testing to ensure integrity of connection
• View inbound queue online
• View quarantined spam online
• One-click 'restore' spam to filter queue
• Option to disable anti-virus and/or spam protection
• Option to disable virus notifications
• 4 Different protection levels for spam
• Quarantine spam or add static tag for local filtering
• Ability to change user license online
• Blacklist and whitelist facilities

Benefits

Wondering how adopting SMG can help your business? Here's what our customers get:

Impact on Business

Spam and viruses cost businesses money. A rogue email could down your systems, offend a customer or cause a delay that means an urgent order or support request never gets through.

Time

Your technical support team are no longer wasting time dealing with internal complaints about spam and diagnosing problems caused by viruses. They're doing what you want them to do.

Reliability

Here's an example: One email server we were monitoring built up a queue of 50,000 emails sending bounce notifications(rejections) to addresses that didn't exist! These were responses to spam that had been sent to random addresses. The resulting load delayed outbound emails by hours causing inconvenience to employees and customers.

No Hassle

Sure you could get your own solution built in house, but consider this: You'll need a server, subscription-based software and a lot of time installing, configuring and testing. Plus, you'll have to maintain it. With SMG, the viruses never get to your network in the first place. We've done all the work for you and it's a fraction of the cost to implement.

Your Integrity

Accidentally transmitting a virus to your customers may not be your fault, but it doesn't look good. We'll scan your outbound email as well as inbound, stopping any potential infections.

Data Integrity

Viruses and worms are there to cause trouble. Even so-called 'benign' worms can contain bugs that could cause your computer to crash, losing data.

Peace of Mind

Most of all, you can stop worrying!

Service Charter

It's quite right for you to wonder about a third party handling your email. This page sets out to address some common concerns.

Our Servers Are Safe

We house our servers in a secure location in London, right at the heart of the UK Internet. These servers are monitored 24/7 by an on-call team.

Redundancy and Resiliency

We operate two identical systems, both made up of server 'farms'. No one server does one job. We've designed our systems to be fault-tolerant at every level. All servers have load-balanced counterparts and opposite numbers in the second duplicate system. You get a lot of infrastructure for a small monthly subscription!

Online Tools

With every subscription comes access to a fully featured control panel. This includes the ability to access your processing queue and a diagnostics section for fully feature testing our systems.

General

How does SMG work?

SMG is a remote email filter. Instead of being directly delivered to your server, emails are first delivered to our data centre. All emails are tested for spam or virus content. Only the emails you want are then forwarded to your network for delivery as normal.

What do I need?

We forward email on as a standard SMTP stream, so you need to be running an SMTP email server that can receive email for your domains.

Do I need a server to run SMG on?

No. SMG is remotely hosted service. You do not need any hardware or software.

I only have one email address, is this right for me?

Probably not, this service is intended for anyone who runs their own email server.

Licensing and Legal

How is SMG licensed?

The service is licensed on a 'per user' basis. A user is defined as any one person that can receive email to a unique mailbox. We do not count 'generic' email addresses such as 'sales@' or 'info@' in the license count. So, if you have 20 people who receive emails, you need a 20-user license. Licenses are available in multiples of 5, with 5 being the minimum purchase.

How much does it cost?

We operate a very simple pricing policy. Contact us to discuss our pricing guide..

Do you do domain-based licensing?

Not at this time. It would be unfair to charge the same rate to a small business with 5 emails as for a large business with 300.

Can I change my license?

Anytime you wish and in any direction.

How do you take payment?

Payments are taken monthly in advance. You can also pay by monthly invoice if you prefer.

What is the minimum contract term?

There is no minimum contract term but bear in mind that refunds will not be given for partital use of a month.

Protection

How does the spam filter work?

Our filter performs several hundred tests on each message. These look at language, origin of message, its structure and path taken through the Internet so far. The resulting 'scores' are added up and then compared with your settings. If the score passes a preset threshold, the message is deemed 'spam'.

How does the virus filter work?

Our filter looks for viruses in attachments or embedded within the email structure itself.

Do you write your own proprietary filters?

No. We use industry standard software that has been held to account in the public forum. This way we know we are using the most effective software, making it the best spam filter available.

Does it delay my email?

It will depend on the size of the email of course, but our tests have shown an average on 2 seconds delay in email delivery times.

Does the spam filter delete emails?

No, it quarantines them. You can view your spam quarantine online and have the option to restore messages that have been mistakenly caught.

What if I want to download spam and filter it locally?

No problem. We can forward all mail on and mark spam with a specific header. Simply filter this header locally to detect what is spam.

What if the spam filter traps a valid message?

Regrettably, there is no definitive test to determine spam, only very well educated assessments. Occasionally, a valid mail may be caught although this is exceedingly rare. Should this happen, you can restore the message by viewing it in the Quarantine area of your web-based control panel. You can also use whitelists to prevent this happening on specific domains or addresses.

Do you alert the sender of a virus?

No. Typically, the sender of an email-based worm is a fake address anyway.

Can I switch alerts off?

Yes. We can protect you silently.

How often do you update your virus detection drivers?

Every 15 minutes, 24/7/365.

What other protection methods are available?

We also offer blacklists and whitelists. These are lists of email addresses that can never or always email you respectively.

MX Records and Domains

What's an MX record?

A MX (Mail eXchanger) record determines the destination of an email. When an email is sent, the server requests the MX record for the domain (everything after the '@' sign). The record points to the destination server.

Why do I need to change my MX record?

For SMG to work, we must receive your email before it gets to your network. So, we change the MX records to point to our servers and you tell us where to deliver email to.

How do I change my MX record?

If we host your domain name, we will do it for you, otherwise we can help you get it changed by talking to your ISP for you.

I have multiple domains, is there an extra charge?

No. You can associate up to 50 domains with your account at no additional charge.

Security and Integrity

How do I stop direct delivery of viruses to my server?

Even with SMG, some more devious worms will try and connect directly to your server, ignoring MX records. We will advise you to only ever accept connections from our servers by configuring your email server and/or firewall.

Do you read or copy my email?

No. Never. We process literally millions of emails every day and see it as our task to get them scanned and off our network as soon as possible.

Is SMG's infrastructure up to the job?

We've spent a lot of time developing an infrastructure that is capable of dealing with constantly growing email traffic. We operate two systems, both identical and comprised of numerous server 'farms' (small groups of servers acting as one). Each farm has a specific task such as spam scanning, SMTP delivery, connection marshalling and so on. The farms link together to form the processing 'chain' from receipt to delivery. This entire system is then duplicated in the second infrastructure, providing both loadbalancing and fault tolerance. If a member of a farm should fail, the system keeps running. If an entire system is knocked out, the other system takes over. These systems are based in Telehouse, London, the very heart of the UK Internet. Monitoring is performed by a number of system 24/7 with technical staff on-site and on standby around the clock.