Configuring Email Spam Server

A mail server is an email spam server that implements an email filtering solution to improve the server’s spam detection rate and mitigate a company’s susceptibility to email-based attacks including phishing, malware, and ransomware.

An email spam server is straightforward to configure by installing an email filtering solution as a virtual appliance, or by redirecting the mail server´s MX record towards a cloud-based anti spam service from a SaaS provider.

Once the email spam server has been configured, it will move incoming emails at the server level, rather than at the client level. Due to this, an email spam server requires much less maintenance overhead than a client-based solution does. Additionally it provides network administrators a greater level of governance over email activity and the volume of threats being blocked by the server.

Why Set up a Mail Server when you Already have an Email Filtering Solution?

The majority of email services feature some degree of email filtering, but rarely is it enough to prevent businesses receiving significant amounts of spam and phishing emails. In most situations default anti spam servers prevent between 95% and 97% of spam – which, in a large company, can mean hundreds of spam emails evade detection daily. Even at the highest levels of spam detection, there would be cause for some worry with such a spam email service.

Cybercriminals are carrying out increasingly complex campaigns to deliver spam, phishing emails, and malware-laced messages. An advanced server spam solution can be the key to those messages being identified and rejected or quarantined, or being sent to an end user’s inbox. It only takes one view on a carefully-crafted link in the body of an email or the opening of a malicious attachment for an attack to be successful.

Third-party email filtering solutions have more advanced features and spam detection mechanisms than those supplied as default by email suppliers. A focused email spam service will spot more spam email and other threats and will greatly enhance your security posture. With an advanced server spam filter or cloud-based filtering service you will be able to reduce the volume of spam emails that arrive in inboxes and block more malicious messages before they cause any damage.

How an Email Spam Server Results in Higher Identification Rates

Most default email services use Real-time Blackhole compiles (RBLs) and SUBRL filters to prevent spam. These compare the IP addresses of incoming emails against databases listing IP addresses from which spam is known to have come from.. The likely reason why a spam email evades detection at this point is because it has been sent from a source not previously used for spamming.

An email spam server uses a process known as greylisting to spot spam sent from unknown sources. It does this by returning suspect incoming emails to the mail servers from which they sprang, along with a request for the email to be resent. Most mail servers respond within minutes and the emails are sent back. Thereafter they undergo a series of secondary tests to deduce their authenticity.

A hacker’s spam mail server will usually be too busy sending out spam emails to respond to resend requests, so the emails are unlikely to be returned or will be severely slowed. Using this process to stop spam from previously unknown sources, an email spam server increases the spam detection rate from 99% to close to 100% – substantially cutting the volume of complex and dangerous messages being delivered to employees´ inboxes.