F-PROT AVES, the managed e-mail security service, combines the comprehensive virus detection of F-PROT Antivirus with a specialized e-mail security scanner and state-of-the-art antispam technology. As a result, F-PROT AVES provides customers with maximum protection against the dual threat of e-mail borne malware (viruses, worms, Trojans etc.) and the ever increasing problem of unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam.

F-PROT AVES recognizes over 546460 different viruses and Trojans, as well as incorporating a powerful neural network and set of heuristics to detect any new threats that may emerge. A large number of recognized viruses can be automatically deleted, allowing the rest of the message to arrive at its destination without any danger of infection. Any messages from mass mailing worms are blocked entirely and then silently ignored as their messages contain no useful content.

Before you receive your e-mail, it is routed through a F-PROT AVES Scanning Cluster and scanned by multiple scanners for viruses and spam. F-PROT AVES inspects each message and evaluates its content and structure according to various scales in order to ascertain whether the message is spam or not. Domain or individual policies can then indicate what is to be done with each message on a case-by-case basis. There are two spam definition thresholds. When a message crosses the first threshold, it is marked as spam. A label is added to the subject line and an indicator is added to the header in order to inform the recipient of the e-mail's possible nature. When a message crosses the second threshold, however, it is blocked and kept in the quarantine, where it can be checked by the user and delivered at the users request should it be required.

A systemwide, automatic whitelisting system learns to recognize safe mailers and user-defined blacklists and whitelists are provided.

If an e-mail violates the recipient’s security policy then a clean version that complies with the security policy, is delivered and the original copy is stored in the Message Quarantine for 14 days. Otherwise, if the e-mail did not violate any rules, it is immediately delivered to the recipient. Potential spam is either marked as such to simplify client-side filtering, or simply detained in the recipient’s Message Quarantine.

Customizable Features

F-PROT AVES stores unmodified copies of all infected messages in the Message Quarantine. Users have access to the Message Quarantine through a Web Interface and can view a message log and see how the message's content has been modified. The user can also bypass the F-PROT AVES filters to resend the original e-mail to his/her mailbox.

These are some of the features that can be customised in F-PROT AVES:

• Virus scanning and disinfection policies
• Permitted or banned attachment types
• Preventative security measures, such as message header sanity checks, standard compliance checks and removal of JavaScript or “web bugs” from HTML e-mail
• Access to the web interface can be controlled, giving some users permission to manipulate the contents of their own quarantine while others must seek assistance from their system administrator

Setting up your F-PROT AVES Service

The F-PROT AVES managed e-mail security service network is based on modifying the MX (mail exchange) entries in the DNS name server for the domain that will be filtered, to route all e-mail through the F-PROT AVES Scanning Clusters. The Scanning Clusters are configured to route the clean and safe e-mail to the customer’s pre-existing mail servers. This ensures that only a minimal setup effort is needed (selecting the desired security policy and re-configuring the DNS servers); regular users do not have to change any of their local configurations; they simply continue fetching their e-mail from the same mail server as before. The whole process has no noticeable effect on e-mail delivery. On average it only takes 1.5 seconds to scan each e-mail, although the actual processing time for each message depends on network conditions and message size. No changes will be made to your e-mail address but the virus and spam protection will be added to your current e-mail account.