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 SLAs 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.
Benefits
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Enhanced protection from multiple filtering layers helps
secure networks from unwanted e-mail
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Increased end-user productivity as a result of a cleaner,
safer inbox from superior spam filtering
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Virtually no impact to legitimate e-mail from incorrect
filtering
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Intelligent detection algorithms and continual updates from
the expert spam team help eliminate tuning by administrators
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Features to help support enforcement of e-mail policies
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Creation of custom-fit policy rules with flexible rule
authoring
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Comprehensive set of SLAs backing network performance and
spam/virus filtering effectiveness
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Service Level Agreements (Terms and Conditions Apply)
Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering provides comprehensive Service
Level Agreements (SLAs) backing network performance and spam and virus
filtering effectiveness. The SLAs include:
Filtering Network Infrastructure
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Network Uptime: 99.999%
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| • |
Email Delivery: Average delivery commitment of less than two
minutes
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Filtering Accuracy
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Virus Blocking: 100% protection against all known email
viruses
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| • |
Spam Capture: Capture of at least 95% of all inbound spam
email
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| • |
False Positive Ratio: False positive commitment of less than
1 in 250,000 emails
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Next Steps
