MPP Australia Email Security Blog » mpp

MPPs SMTP Gateway function (including Microsoft Exchange)

admin — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:59:26 +0000

MPP can easily run on Linux and Mac OSX Mail servers for its advanced spam filtering ability. But it also can run in gateway mode to produce the same results with ANY mail server via the SMTP gateway function. By combining MPP and Postfix (available free for Linux) either as a standalone PC or via a VMWare image – the mail will arrive at the MPP system, get filtered and then forwarded on to the end mail server CLEAN!
MPP will do its normal process of quarantine / archive / discarding the email, then delivers the good mail as normal to your server.Users can log in to the easy to use web interface if they ever want to check the spam or archive records, and will have a clean mailbox like never before. Combine it with a email backup solution like Unitrends and you have a complete business mail and backup solution!

MPP now available as “out of the box” ready VMWare bundle

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:57:20 +0000

It has never been easier to install MPP than now. With the MPP Virtual Appliance you can have a complete antispam and email archival gateway running in less than 10 minutes after download. You can install on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X and the user needs no knowledge of Linux to configure the system in a typical application.
MPP Virtual Appliance is a semi-configured Linux gateway solution using Postfix and MPP (between real mail server and firewall/NAT host/router). All you need is the VMWare Player and you can start !! OS: Windows / Linux, OS: MacOS X / Intel OS: MacOS X / Intel
The VMware engine comes configured with-
* OS: Debian Linux 4.0 (Etch)
* MTA: Postfix version 2.3.8
* MPP version 3.6.1 trial
* DB server: MySQL 5.0.34
* MPP Manager 1.0.5 (Qreview 3.2.2 + MPP GUI 3.6.1)
setup ready to start! Further into available at ftp://ftp.messagepartners.com/pub/appliance/README.txt
Get your free trial today from our website – http://mpp.ezylink.net.au/trial.php

MPP Email Archival – advanced storage solution

admin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:22:00 +0000

MPP can archive email into a variety of formats to satisfy a range of applications ranging from compliance with regulatory statutes to general historic archival. The MPP archive system is unique in that it is standard and open and is especially well suited to Linux and other *nix operating environments.
MPPserver is our archive search and retrieval application, included when you buy MPP. Since the archived emails are in standard format you are also able to integrate other archive analysis software of use the powerful builtin mppserver engine (with the optional sphinx text search upgrade also available for fast email scanning/searching).
MPP archives in a variety of formats – MySQL, MIME encoded files, maildir or hybrid(metadata) file locations.

Greylisting – how does it work?

admin — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:40:08 +0000

Greylisting is a very effective, low-resource tool to stop spam and virus’. It works by sending an SMTP temporary failure message to any new sender on your network. Most spam drones and virus engines do not retry after temporary failure messages and simply go away, whilst legit mailservers will retry again after a period. Just be aware that new senders emails wont come through instantly – but once retried from the sending mail server and found OK their address is recorded and allowed as normal from then on.

Greylisting works with MPP and Postfix systems, and is integrated on a per group or system wide basis – and is another way that the MPP engine enables mail admins to reduce end user spam email even more.

MPP Real World usage figures – some examples of spam volumes

admin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 11:28:45 +0000

We have been running the MPPD for a few years now to i thought it would be intersting to see the stats that the server is producing for our email filtering.

Date

Total

Clean

Virus

Spam

Error

WBL
matched

RBL
matched

11-19

24527

Clean 1996
(8.14%)

Virus 49
(0.20%)

Spam 2184
(8.90%)

0.00 (%)

0
(0.00%)

RBL 20298
(82.76%)

We sampled 1 days email (20 hrs) to see how it was performing – and the figures are amazing. Over 24000 emails hit our server, of which only 8% were legit! so over 22000 emails were junk – with the MPP filter blocking RBL (black list), Commtouch traced spam and ClamAV ID’d virus’ at the front door of our sendmail box. Some were rejected, some sent to SQL quarantine, and some passed through with no noticeable affect on the server boxes performance.Its incredible to think what end users would be getting in their mailbox each day if MPP wasnt there protecting the system.

MPP with Commtouch – a formidable opponent

admin — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:30:31 +0000

MessagePartners MPP eMail server security is the product we use for our mail server. It protects our internet customer base from spam and virus’ before they even get to their mailboxes – keeping them free for the good stuff to make it through.

We initially ran MPP with SpamAssasin, a free anti spam engine that worked well, but would only get about 60-70% of the spam coming in (which was a major improvement over 0% which is what it was!).

We then looked at upgrading to a commercial engine – and went with Mailshell. Another major upgrade, which got us up to about 85% stoppage, but with a few emails starting to get false positives. Its always going to happen thanks to the many and varied ways spammers try to get their junk out!

Just recently we went to one of the premium anti spam engines (Cloudmark being the other one) called Commtouch. And i have to say the spam recognition is now around 96-98%, with virtually NO false positives! Our customers are getting the advantage of only real mail coming in, and our mail server is not overloaded with junk. It only costs a few dollars more per year for each mailbox to have the premium engine, but it was worth every cent. It is becoming a strange expenrience to check the mail each day and find its all real – something I havent seen in a real long time!