SURGECOM COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED (INTRANET SOLUTIONS) 

 SURGECOMail Enterprise Edition gives you everything you need to provide an email platform for a medium to large sized organization. It is optimized for a high message throughput and comes with a rich set of features including server-based virus protection, comprehensive content filtering, spam filtering, public folders, web-based client support, web-based administration, LDAP shared address book and mailing list management.

Unlike the Professional Edition where certain functionality is available as an optional software plug-in, the Enterprise Edition contains all functionality built-in. This also means that there is a significant performance benefit which leads to an increase in message throughput.

Most larger organizations tend to host their own email domain and SURGECOMail can provide the necessary security features for this, such as relay control, IP filtering and spam filtering. However if it is a requirement to collect mail from one or more ISPs, then SURGECOMail can also be configured to do this.

E-mail

Reliable Mail Services

SURGECOMail has integrated the same scalable and reliable POP/IMAP and SMTP servers used by medium-sized and large organizations. There are both Linux and windows-based. It is possible for a small business to enjoy an enterprise class e-mail system. This allows companies emails to be pulled from their external server to their local network and also send mail from their local network to there external servers..

Webmail, Outlook and More

 End users can access their e-mail using any number of standard e-mail clients.  Though Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express is the most popular way to access mail on a SURGECOMail server, you can also use the built-in Webmail module and other popular e-mail software packages.

Features

WebMail is an optional component which allows your staff to send and receive e-mail using Internet Explorer. This has many benefits, such as the ability for your staff to be able to access and respond to their e-mail from anywhere in the world. If your staff use IMAP to access their e-mail rather than downloading messages from SURGECOMail using POP3, then WebMail can be used in conjunction with a desktop mail client (like Microsoft Outlook). This makes it possible to use a mail client whilst in the office, but use WebMail when away from the office.

WebMail is installed onto the computer which runs SURGECOMail. This computer must also run Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). Once installed, a user can browse to the appropriate login page, enter their usual account details and gain access to their e-mail. Using WebMail, they will have access to all their IMAP folders, any public folders and they will also be able to create their own personal folders.

Additionally, they may compose new messages, reply to existing messages, lookup addresses in the shared address book, file and delete mail.

Shared Address Book. The Shared Address Book component possible makes it possible for users to share and lookup names and email addresses from their mail client. Having the email addresses held centrally minimizes the possibility of your users sending mail to the wrong email address and so minimizes the associated wasted time.

The Shared Address Book optionally extracts the names and addresses from all incoming and outgoing messages and automatically adds the information to a server-based data store. Once enabled, the Shared Address Book will expose the names and addresses via an LDAP server. This means that any LDAP client, such as Outlook Express or Outlook may use the Shared Address Book to lookup e-mail addresses from a name. Once the Shared Address Book is enabled, you will be able to open a new Compose Window in your mail client, and enter the first few letters of a person's name into the To: field and then press the Check button. The mail client will communicate with SURGECOMail in order to determine the full name and e-mail address of the required recipient.

Virus Protection
Virus protection of e-mail in SURGECOMail is achieved in conjunction with 3rd party antivirus software. SURGECOMail can use the most popular antivirus software to check for the existense of a virus in a particular message. These include:

·  Norton Antivirus (desktop edition)

·  Norton Antivirus (corporate edition)

·  McAfee VirusScan

·  Sophos Antivirus

·  Any other 3rd party software which provides a command line interface.

In most cases, SURGECOMail passes the full MIME message to the antivirus software via a command line interface. The exception is Sophos Antivirus, which uses the SAVI interface. For the Professional and Enterprise Edition, the Virus Protection feature can detect viruses, attempt to clean the messages and quarantine the messages. In the Home edition, the Virus Protection feature can only detect and quarantine any infected messages.

Relay Control
When a mail server is connected to the Internet, it must be configured to prevent unauthorized users from connecting to it in order to send mail. The action of a non-trusted user sending mail to a non-local address is termed relaying. SURGECOMail provides relay control functionality to help prevent such unauthorized users by allowing you to enter any number of trusted hosts. This can be either a series of IP addresses, IP address ranges or domain names. Users can also authenticate themselves using SMTP authentication, in which case they do not need to be a trusted host in order to send/relay mail.

Multiple ISPs
Smaller companies and certain larger organizations may choose to use an ISP to host their e-mail. Some companies may use more than one ISP, for example, if they have several domains. SURGECOMail can connect to any number of ISPs in order to send and receive e-mail. If a separate dial-up connection is needed to establish a connection to each ISP then SURGECOMail will connect to each ISP in turn. If there is a permanent connection to the Internet then SURGECOMail can connect to all ISPs simultaneously in order to send and receive mail.

Auto Responders
An auto responder is a mailbox which will automatically respond to any message that it receives with a fixed response. These can be used to immediately notify a sender that his or her message has been received and is being dealt with, or it can be used to notify senders that the person they are emailing is on holiday or any similar such usage. SURGECOMail will let you define any number of auto responders to send either plain text or HTML formatted response messages.

Smart Hosting
A smart host is a mail server that is able to determine the appropriate destination SMTP server that it must connect to in order to send a message to a particular recipient. A smart host server does this using MX resolution. SURGECOMail does not need to send out messages through an ISP (although it can). Instead it can act as a smart host. This has several advantages over sending mail through an ISP. These include greater reliability and speed. Since the SURGECOMail smart host server engine is multi-threaded, it can send out several messages to different destination servers simultaneously, achieving a high throughput of sent messages.

Routing
When SURGECOMail is configured as a smart host server, it can determine the appropriate SMTP server to connect to in order to send a particular message to a recipient by performing an MX lookup on the domain part of the recipient's e-mail address. If your organization is split over several sites with a mail server such as SURGECOMail at each site, then the mail server which receives all mail for the domain will want to forward specific users' messages on to different servers, whilst keeping the original e-mail address unchanged. It can do this using the routing functionality in SURGECOMail.

Spam Filtering
Various servers on the Internet provide a service which lets you determine which SMTP servers are operating as open relays and are therefore attractive targets for use by spammers to send out unsolicited e-mail. SURGECOMail has an anti-spam feature which can check each connecting server to see if it is blacklisted on any of these spam servers. If found to be blacklisted, SURGECOMail can, at your discretion, leave, delete or quarantine any messages sent from these SMTP servers.

IP Screening
SURGECOMail lets you control exactly which computers have access to even connect to any of the interfaces of the SMTP. POP3 or IMAP servers. Using the IP Screening functionality you can create your own simple firewall to prevent certain computers or a range of computers from connecting to SURGECOMail.

Spam filtering of e-mail in SURGECOMail is provided to enable you to reduce the amount of junk mail that your local users receive. This, in turn, will help reduce the amount of time and resource wasted by your staff in receiving such messages.

SURGECOMail approaches the task of filtering spam in two different ways:

·  It can filter based on the IP address of the originator

·  It can filter based on the content of the messages

For each incoming message, SURGECOMail looks at the originator of the message and the content of the message. If the originator's IP address has been black listed or if the message contains known junk mail phrases (defined by you) then SURGECOMail considers the message to be junk mail and processes it according to the option you have specified. On encountering a junk message, SURGECOMail can refuse to accept the message (this does not apply when you receive e-mail via POP3), it can delete the message, it can quarantine the message or it can simply mark the message as spam so that it can be processed appropriately by the content filtering component.

Filtering based on IP address
People who send spam e-mail do so by looking for, and subsequently using, mail servers on the Internet that are not configured to prevent unauthorized users from relaying mail. Such mail servers are referred to as open relays. There are various servers on the Internet that keep a black list of open relay servers. These servers, which are referred to as DNSBL servers, store the IP address of the computer on which the open-relay mail server is running. SURGECOMail can be configured such that every time a message is received, it checks the originating IP address to see if it is black-listed on any of the RBL servers specified in SURGECOMail. If it is, SURGECOMail can reject, quarantine or delete the message, depending on your configuration. Unlike many mail servers, this process works not only when mail is received via SMTP, but also when mail is received via POP3. In the case where a message is received using SMTP, SURGECOMail looks at the IP address of the connecting SMTP client to determine whether the sender is black listed. In the case where a message is received using POP3, SURGECOMail will look at the computers that the message passed through before being delivered to SURGECOMail. If any of the computers are black-listed, the message is considered to be spam.

Filtering based on content
For additional protection, SURGECOMail lets you specify a set of phrases that are commonly found in junk mail. On encountering any such phrases in the content of any inbound mail messages, SURGECOMail will mark the message as spam and subsequently reject, delete or quarantine it, according to your preference.

Content filtering of e-mail in SURGECOMail is about monitoring and controlling the content of messages coming into and leaving your organization. SURGECOMail lets you define a set of rules which reflect your e-mail policy. A successful implementation of the SURGECOMail content filter will help you to:

·  Avoid infection from message bourne viruses

·  Reduce exposure to legal liability

·  Avoid leaks of confidential information

·  Increase productivity by filtering non-business related e-mail

For each incoming or outgoing message, SURGECOMail can look through its list of rules to see if the conditions of any of the rules are met for that particular message. If so the action associated with that rule is performed. This results in a very flexible and powerful way of controlling what comes in and goes out of your organization.

Avoid infection from viruses
If your organization is infected by a virus, it can be a very time consuming and expensive process to eliminate the virus. Most business networks are infected by e-mail bourne viruses. Traditionally, antivirus software is run on each client computer and the virus is caught only when someone inadvertently opens an infected message. A more secure method is to prevent the virus from entering the network at all by catching it at the mail server as soon as it comes in.

SURGECOMail lets you do this using content filtering. By adding a rule and selecting the condition "If the message contains a virus" and then selecting an associated action, for example, "Quarantine the message" and "Inform specific recipient with specific message", then as soon as an infected message is received by SURGECOMail, it is immediately quarantined into a safe area and the appropriate member of staff is notified.

SURGECOMail can use the most popular antivirus software to check for the existence of a virus in a particular message. These include:

·  Norton Antivirus (desktop edition)

·  Norton Antivirus (corporate edition)

·  McAfee VirusScan

·  Sophos Antivirus

·  Any other 3rd party software which provides a command line interface.
Note: The Virus Protection plug-in must be purchased in order to use the virus protection features of the content filter.

Reduce your exposure to legal liability
Any messages sent by the employees of a company is done so on behalf of that company. Thus any views or comments made in such messages are representative of the company and are legally binding. There are many examples of lawsuits filed against companies whose employees have made racist or sexist remarks transmitted by e-mail.

SURGECOMail can look for offensive words in the content of messages sent both internally and externally and can quarantine such messages and notify the appropriate members of staff who can then make an informed decision as to whether to permit or delete such messages.

Appending legal disclaimers can help reduce a company's liability with respect to comments made by individuals within that company. SURGECOMail makes it easy to append consistent legal disclaimers to all messages sent out.

Avoid leaks of confidential information
For many companies, preventing leaks of confidential information is key to the success of their business. E-mail is an easy outlet for accidental or deliberate leaks of confidential information. SURGECOMail can detect messages containing words such as "confidential", "financial report", "secret" or a specific project code and on detection, if the message was sent by anyone other than a permitted employee, can quarantine the offending message and warn the appropriate member of staff of the confidentiality breach.

Increasing productivity by filtering non-business related e-mail (attachment filtering)
Personal use of e-mail can result in thousands of dollars worth of unproductive time per employee per year. With some employees regularly posting large GIF files and executable files to colleagues both internally and externally, it is not just their time being wasted, but also network bandwidth which could also be reducing the productivity of other members of staff. SURGECOMail can be configured to detect non business related e-mail, such as jokes, chain letters and large non business related attachments and can either delete or quarantine such messages. For the more leniant employer, SURGECOMail could be configured such that personal e-mail can be quarantined if sent during the day and then delivered during less busy periods, for example, overnight.

Virus Protection of e-mail is one of the most important aspects when considering security issues related to your mail server. If your organization is infected by a virus, it can be a very time consuming and expensive process to eliminate the virus. Most business networks are infected by e-mail bourne viruses. Traditionally, antivirus software is run on each client computer and the virus is caught only when someone inadvertently opens an infected message. A more secure method is to prevent the virus from entering the network at all by catching it at the mail server as soon as it comes in.

Virus protection of e-mail in SURGECOMail is achieved in conjunction with 3rd party antivirus software. SURGECOMail can use the most popular antivirus software to check for the existense of a virus in a particular message. These include:

·  Norton Antivirus (desktop edition)

·  Norton Antivirus (corporate edition)

·  McAfee VirusScan

·  Sophos Antivirus

·  Any other 3rd party software which provides a command line interface.

Virus protection is available either using content filtering or by using the Virus Protection plug-in. In either case, it is possible to specify which quarantine any infected messages should be sent to and which person should be notified, if any, on detection of a virus. When using content filtering to perform the virus checking, you have more flexibility over what to do when a virus is detected since all the content filtering actions are available to you.

Client-side SMTP Authentication. If you want to control access to the SURGECOMail SMTP server through the use of client-side SMTP authentication rather than, or in addition to, declaring trusted hosts, then you can configure this in each mail client appropriately. For example, both Outlook and Outlook Express have an option in the account settings called My server requires authentication.

If you enable this option, you must also specify a username and password to identify the user of the mail client as an authenticated user. The username and password to use for a particular user may be found by selecting the appropriate user from the left-hand window of the SURGECOMail administrator and looking for the values of Local account name and Local account password, respectively.

Relay control. When a mail server is connected to the Internet, it must be configured to prevent unauthorized users from connecting to it in order to send mail. A server that allows non-trusted users to send mail to a non-local address is referred to as an open relay.

SURGECOMail provides relay control functionality to help prevent such unauthorized users from accessing your server by allowing you to enter any number of trusted hosts. These can be either a series of IP addresses, IP address ranges or domain names. Users can also authenticate themselves using SMTP authentication, in which case they do not need to be a trusted host in order to send/relay mail. Instead they simply configure their mail client to authenticate with the SURGECOMail SMTP server.

 

Message Archiving. Keeps an archive copy of every sent and received message. You can use the Message Archiver administrator to show messages between specified dates and to extract archived messages for delivery to a specific user. This plug-in is free and may be imported into the SURGECOMail administrator after SURGECOMail has been installed.

Message archiving. Legal compliance requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, requires certain organizations to archive their email for a number of years. Softalk Mail Server's message archiver can capture every incoming, sent and internal message, storing it to a database, with full indexing for efficient searching of the archive.

The message archiver lets you choose which users mail should be archived and you can specify whether or not attachments should be archived. Searching the archive is fast and efficient and the archiver makes it easy to extract and deliver archived messages to specific users.

Tel: 01-8721262, 08034669303.