PostMaster AvAc
Server level protection against E-mail bourne viruses

Anti-virus software is about minimizing, if not eliminating the impact that a new or particularly malicious strain of virus could have on your network. And it's about doing this as conveniently as possible. Thus ideally, if you have a solution that offers the best possible protection for known viruses and an equally thorough mechanism of keeping it regularly updated, then the risk to your network from virus attacks is greatly reduced.

Getting that protection at the email server level - which is the gateway into your network - tackles the potential threat before it has a chance to penetrate further into your network.

Tackling the problem - a multi-tier approach

Let's take a quick look at how your E-mail system works. When you send out a message from your E-mail client, this is relayed to Postmaster email server, which accepts it and queues it for delivery.

The next time Postmaster connects to the Internet, it contacts an Internet-based Mail Server. Then it transmits this message for onward delivery. The message then moves across the Internet to the recipient's Internet-based Mail Server, where the POP3 (Post Office Protocol) server software accepts the message and stores it for the next time that the recipient connects to collect his messages. And the reverse follows when someone sends you a message.

Thus, the Internet-based POP3 server is the first point of entry of E-mail into your network.

This means that there are potentially three points at which an Anti-virus solution can be put to work, namely

1. On the Internet server, outside of the network
2. On the network mail server, i.e. the machine on which Postmaster has been installed and
3. On every node, or individual desktop machine.

Postmaster AvAc - an email server level Anti-virus solution

Postmaster AvAc runs as an add-on module on the Postmaster server, which is the E-mail gateway into your network. This ensures that scanning is completed before the message is delivered to the recipient - the decision and ultimate responsibility of what to do with infected messages is thus taken away from the end-user.

In a busy office environment, with users who may not be completely aware of the damage that viruses can wreak, it's all too easy to open an infected E-mail, particularly if the attachment has a sufficiently tempting name & comes from a known source.

This is precisely the loophole that Worms exploit - often creating immense damage. Therefore, protection at the server, where infected messages are cleaned before being delivered to the recipient, is safer and more productive.

AvAc is tightly integrated with Postmaster and thus delivers optimum efficiency in message scanning at the attachment and content level.

What AvAc offers?

AvAc provides all the capabilities of a typical anti-virus utility:

• Self-learning heuristics engine
• Automatic updates
• Choice of action
• Alerts to sender & recipient

Attachment Control

This features of AvAc is intended to give you control over e-mail content, in addition to protection from malicious content. with the amount of objectionable material spreading over e-mail, this becomes a gateway-level filter for such content. Not to mention filtering sensitive material being sent out of your network.

AvAc lets you manage the content that enters your network, both malicious as well as plain objectionable. Thus giving you the first set of tools to lay down an E-mail usage policy.

AvAc is part of the Iquinox suite, which presently consists of

• Postmaster Enterprise
• SurfConsole
• GatePass

To know more about the IQuinox platform and how these have a direct and measurable impact on communications productivity, please write to postmaster@ebizindia.com.