GFI MAX MailEdge | GFIGuard.com

Hosted Frontline Defense for Your Email Security System

Email is a critical communications tool. In an environment of continually rising volumes of spam and email threats, companies are facing the need to economically defend their infrastructure while also protecting against any email downtime. Using a hybrid solution that combines an existing on-premise anti-spam/antivirus system with an online solution enables customers to leverage their existing investment, while ensuring stronger defense against threats and providing an on-demand, always available backup mail service.

As a hosted frontline defense solution for your email security system, GFI MAX MailEdge offers an additional layer of email threat protection and email continuity functionality. Designed to be used in combination with GFI MailEssentials, GFI MailSecurity or other existing on-premise anti-spam/anti-virus tools, GFI MAX MailEdge is able to block the most obvious spam before it reaches a customer’s network, drastically reducing the bandwidth and processing power required for handling the increasing volumes of incoming email, and effectively increasing the capacity of the on-premise tool. Equally importantly, GFI MAX MailEdge provides email continuity: the service will automatically queue any legitimate inbound email messages that cannot be delivered, and allows customers to access and respond to those messages when the customer’s email server is offline.

The key benefits of GFI MAX MailEdge are:

Defense in depth due to the hybrid combination of on-premise and on-line systems.
Most spam and virus threats are blocked outside of the network, reducing bandwidth requirements and improving email server performance.
Rapid deployment and little or no ongoing management.
Business continuity with integrated queuing and on-demand mail service.
Brandable at all touch points including web-based control panel
Simple, per-user-per-month pricing structure, with no capital expenditure or start-up costs.
Compatibility with any email, anti-virus, anti-spam or operating systems

Features:

Network Defense
Up to 90% of all spam and email threats can be blocked before they reach the customer's network - reducing risk, freeing up network bandwidth and easing mail server load.

Continuity
Customers can continue accessing, responding to, and sending email messages, even in the event of an on-premise mail server or network outage; mail is queued by the service, and customers can continue accessing or responding to those messages via the GFI MAX MailProtection control panel, even while their own mail server is off-line.

Directory Harvest Attack Prevention
Defend against spammers who attempt to deliver messages to a large number of valid and invalid email addresses at your domain.

Intuitive Web-Based Control Panel
The customizable web-based control panel allows administrators and users to control the service, while providing access to queued mail in the event of an on-premise mail server failure.

Denial of Service Attack (DoS) Prevention
Prevent email-based DoS attacks by limiting and controlling inbound SMTP traffic from one or more given source IP addresses.

Brandable At All Touch Points including its Web-Based Control Panel
Distributors, partners or customers can consistently promote themselves to their user-base with an easily customizable GUI, which can reflect the desired URL, logo, and color scheme of that organization. The branding extends beyond the web-based control panel to all end-user touch points, including customizable message digests, notifications, and other communications.

Platform-Neutral
Works with any operating systems or mail infrastructure including Exchange, Lotus Notes, GroupWise, Zimbra, qmail, postfix, sendmail and any other SMTP server.

Benefits:

Benefits for small and medium-size business (SMBs) and end-users

GFI MAX MailEdge is a complementary solution adding email continuity and an extra layer of email threat protection to existing on-premise anti-spam/anti-virus solutions. The hybrid service plus on-premise solution offers customers defense in depth, better scalability and reliability than a single on-premise solution, and email continuity to safeguard an organization's mission-critical communications.

Easy, Affordable & Risk-free: How GFI MAX MailEdge Benefits Your Business

With GFI MAX MailEdge you can enjoy the following benefits:

Immediate activation – simply register for better protection and peace of mind for just cents per user per month.
No additional hardware or software to download, install, or maintain.
Email threats are blocked before reaching your network – dramatically reducing risk, bandwidth and storage requirements and load on the mail server.
Allows customers to continue using email even when their own mail server is down; incoming messages are queued, and customers can access and respond to those messages via the web interface, at any time and with no prior preparation other than simply using the service.
Minimal or no training requirements mean that an organization can be up and running immediately and with ease.
Support - GFI MAX MailEdge’s customer service team provides responsive support to all customers large and small, from assistance with the initial activation to help with any other questions that may arise, online or by phone, 24/7.

Benefits for Partners, IT Support Companies & MSPs

Easy, Affordable & Risk-free: How GFI MAX MailEdge Benefits Your Business

Value added resellers, managed service providers, and IT service companies can implement GFI MAX MailEdge as a hybrid solution in combination with on-premise GFI MailEssentials/GFI MailSecurity software or other email security offerings. This hybrid approach to email security offers the best of both on-premise and hosted solutions, providing customers with defense in depth, better scalability and reliability than a single on premise solution, and email continuity to safeguard an organization's mission-critical communications.

GFI MAX MailEdge is designed from the ground up for partners, with features including native full re-branding and hierarchical management capabilities. The service is easily and inexpensively fully brandable at all end-user touch points, to allow partners of any size to offer the service as an OEM solution.

Partners benefit from a recurring revenue model, and a tiered pricing model that allows them to achieve very substantial margins. Additionally, there are no quotas or minimum commitments for partners - just a simple service agreement that allows partners to set up and manage their customers within GFI MAX MailEdge, without intervention.

The GFI MAX MailEdge service includes multiple features, including:

Inbound filtering to block up to 90% of email threats before they reach the customer's network - reducing risk, bandwidth and storage requirements and mail server load.
Integrated email continuity provides automatic queuing of messages and on-demand mail hosting if or when a customer's mail server or network connectivity is off-line.
Use of multiple systems at multiple datacenters to provide better scalability and reliability than a single on-premise solution.
Compatibility with any operating system(s), anti-spam and anti-virus appliances or software and any email infrastructure.
Straightforward and inexpensive pricing, with no capital expenditure or startup costs.
Fully brandable with the partner's own corporate identity at all touch-points.

GFI is committed to its partners and provides marketing support, sales support, and other business development assistance, in addition to unlimited responsive and knowledgeable technical support by phone and email.

Partners can implement GFI MAX MailEdge remotely and rapidly, with little or no need for ongoing maintenance by the partner or by their customers.

How it Works:

Infrastructure

At GFI, we have invested significantly in developing a reliable, stable, and scalable approach to mail security that is hands-free and trouble-free for our customers. To this end we have developed the GFI MAX MailEdge service to complement and enhance the performance of on-premise solutions and to ensure email continuity for customers using existing software or hardware antispam/antivirus solutions.

Network Architecture

GFI MAX MailEdge’s network architecture uses multiple datacenters. For maximum reliability, the datacenters have diversified management, regional power sources, and connectivity. Each datacenter features a Cisco-based, fault-tolerant network with redundant Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to multiple Tier 1 backbone providers.

Hosting Environment

Each carrier-grade datacenter chosen by GFI provides power feeds from redundant power sources, continuously online UPS systems, redundant climate control, 24x7 manned guard stations, and institutional banking quality access procedures. All have emergency diesel generators with ample fuel on-site as well as negotiated arrangements for priority refuelling in the event of an extended utility power outage.

Redundant Parallel Systems

The GFI MAX MailEdge architecture is modular and comprised of load balancers, front-end message processing servers, back-end filtering systems, supervisor modules and database servers. All of these systems - from the front-end load balancers to the back-end database servers - are redundant and running in parallel. Additionally, the application is designed for geographic diversity, with distributed logging and processing across multiple datacenters.

Proven Software

Engineered to scale with the rapid growth of junk mail, the software used for GFI MAX MailEdge is purpose-built and highly optimized. The third-generation software design uses modular scanning techniques for maximum flexibility, and is designed to avoid unnecessary use of disk at all opportunities. The underlying software used for GFI MAX MailEdge has been proven through the processing of billions of messages for customers.

Monitoring

Each network component and each system within the GFI MAX MailEdge service is continuously tested at the network-level and/or service-level by redundant monitoring systems. Furthermore, 24x7 full-path message monitoring tests real-world system performance across the application.

Management

GFI MAX MailEdge requires almost no management. Administrators can set up the service in a matter of minutes, after which the service can run unattended.

Seamless integration

GFI MAX MailEdge seamlessly integrates with a wide variety of on-premise anti-spam and anti-virus protection offerings. And as a service, GFI MAX MailEdge is compatible with any operating systems and mail server infrastructure in place.

True continuity

GFI MAX MailEdge provides organizations with peace of mind regarding their email via an integrated continuity service.

In the event that the customer's mail server is temporarily down or inaccessible, GFI MAX MailEdge acts as a message queue. No messages are lost, and people who send email to that organization don’t receive error messages; GFI MAX MailEdge simply stores those messages and delivers them once the customer’s mail server is back online. It uses a timing algorithm to deliver queued messages to ensure that the customer’s mail server is not overwhelmed with a sudden barrage of queued messages once the server is back up and running.

More importantly, customers can access and respond to any queued messages via the GFI MAX MailEdge control panel - allowing customers to continue their business-critical email communications even when their own mail infrastructure is off-line. This on-demand, full-fledged backup mail service is available at any time, without the need for customers to invest in hardware or software or to make any advance preparations other than normal use of the service.

With these features, GFI Software provides companies with true email continuity under circumstances ranging from a brief, planned mail server upgrade, to a major network outage caused by a natural disaster.

Screenshots:

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Admin Destination Mail Servers	Admin User list	Admin Whitelist by source IP

User Whitelist

How it works:

Infrastructure

At GFI, we have invested significantly in developing a reliable, stable, and scalable approach to mail security that is hands-free and trouble-free for our customers. To this end we have developed the GFI MAX MailEdge service to complement and enhance the performance of on-premise solutions and to ensure email continuity for customers using existing software or hardware antispam/antivirus solutions.

Network Architecture

GFI MAX MailEdge’s network architecture uses multiple datacenters. For maximum reliability, the datacenters have diversified management, regional power sources, and connectivity. Each datacenter features a Cisco-based, fault-tolerant network with redundant Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to multiple Tier 1 backbone providers.

Hosting Environment

Each carrier-grade datacenter chosen by GFI provides power feeds from redundant power sources, continuously online UPS systems, redundant climate control, 24x7 manned guard stations, and institutional banking quality access procedures. All have emergency diesel generators with ample fuel on-site as well as negotiated arrangements for priority refuelling in the event of an extended utility power outage.

Redundant Parallel Systems

The GFI MAX MailEdge architecture is modular and comprised of load balancers, front-end message processing servers, back-end filtering systems, supervisor modules and database servers. All of these systems - from the front-end load balancers to the back-end database servers - are redundant and running in parallel. Additionally, the application is designed for geographic diversity, with distributed logging and processing across multiple datacenters.

Proven Software

Engineered to scale with the rapid growth of junk mail, the software used for GFI MAX MailEdge is purpose-built and highly optimized. The third-generation software design uses modular scanning techniques for maximum flexibility, and is designed to avoid unnecessary use of disk at all opportunities. The underlying software used for GFI MAX MailEdge has been proven through the processing of billions of messages for customers.

Monitoring

Each network component and each system within the GFI MAX MailEdge service is continuously tested at the network-level and/or service-level by redundant monitoring systems. Furthermore, 24x7 full-path message monitoring tests real-world system performance across the application.

Management

GFI MAX MailEdge requires almost no management. Administrators can set up the service in a matter of minutes, after which the service can run unattended.

Seamless integration

GFI MAX MailEdge seamlessly integrates with a wide variety of on-premise anti-spam and anti-virus protection offerings. And as a service, GFI MAX MailEdge is compatible with any operating systems and mail server infrastructure in place.

True continuity

GFI MAX MailEdge provides organizations with peace of mind regarding their email via an integrated continuity service.

In the event that the customer's mail server is temporarily down or inaccessible, GFI MAX MailEdge acts as a message queue. No messages are lost, and people who send email to that organization don’t receive error messages; GFI MAX MailEdge simply stores those messages and delivers them once the customer’s mail server is back online. It uses a timing algorithm to deliver queued messages to ensure that the customer’s mail server is not overwhelmed with a sudden barrage of queued messages once the server is back up and running.

More importantly, customers can access and respond to any queued messages via the GFI MAX MailEdge control panel - allowing customers to continue their business-critical email communications even when their own mail infrastructure is off-line. This on-demand, full-fledged backup mail service is available at any time, without the need for customers to invest in hardware or software or to make any advance preparations other than normal use of the service.

With these features, GFI Software provides companies with true email continuity under circumstances ranging from a brief, planned mail server upgrade, to a major network outage caused by a natural disaster.

GFI MAX MailEdge FAQs:

What is the difference between GFI MAX MailProtection and GFI MAX MailEdge>

GFI MAX MailProtection is a comprehensive hosted email security and email continuity solution. GFI MAX MailEdge is designed to be used in conjunction with an existing on-premise ant-spam/antivirus software or hardware solution, where it provides frontline email defense by blocking most unwanted email traffic before this reaches the mail server, coupled with email continuity.

Implementation

What is involved in implementing the GFI MAX MailEdge service?

All that is necessary is a change in your DNS records, so that the 'MX' (mail exchanger) entries for your domain point to GFI MAX MailEdge's systems. After that change has been made, your email will be redirected through GFI MAX MailEdge’s filters before being automatically delivered to your mail server.

What is an MX record?

A mail exchanger (MX) record identifies the location of a domain’s mail server. The record directs computers on the Internet where to send email for a specific domain. Unfortunately, the record also informs spammers of the location of a domain’s mail server. By changing the MX record, a company can re-route its inbound email to GFI MAX MailEdge, which blocks a large percentage of spam, viruses, and other threats, and delivers the remaining email to the company’s mail server or existing on-premise anti-spam system.

Is there any downtime necessary to implement GFI MAX MailEdge's service?

There is no downtime involved in implementing GFI MAX MailEdge. The set-up process is fast, and does not affect or delay your inbound or outbound email.

How soon will we start seeing results?

Typically, GFI MAX MailEdge begins working within a few hours of the DNS change, and often within a few minutes for a significant percentage of your inbound email. In order for all of your inbound messages to be filtered, the changes to your domain's MX record must fully propagate through the Internet. The (TTL) setting within your domain’s DNS specifies how quickly these changes should take effect; TTL values generally range from one hour to 24 hours. There is no interruption to your mail flow during any of this time.

Reliability and Server Back-Up

How reliable is GFI MAX MailEdge?

GFI MAX MailEdge's network and software architecture have been designed to handle both the rapidly growing volume of email and the heavy peak loads that are characteristic of SMTP traffic. GFI MAX MailEdge leverages multiple datacenters and has no single point of failure. GFI also provides guarantees uptime via a service level agreement that is part of all customer agreements.

Will we experience delays in receiving messages?

No. GFI MAX MailEdge typically processes a message in less than a second. Customers do not notice any delays in the delivery of email.

What happens if our mail server goes down?

In the event that a customer's mail server is inaccessible, the GFI MAX MailEdge system acts as a message queue so that emails will be delivered to the customer once the mail server is back online. GFI MAX MailEdge uses a timing algorithm to gracefully deliver those queued messages, to ensure that the customer’s mail server is not overwhelmed with a sudden barrage of inbound mail.

Additionally, the service includes full email continuity, so that customers can access and respond to any messages in queue, via the GFI MAX MailEdge web interface. With this capability, customers can continue using email even in the event of an emergency affecting their own email systems

Security

How secure is the privacy of my email?

The GFI MAX MailEdge service does not affect your email's security. First of all, email itself is inherently not secure. Email messages are sent in clear, unencrypted plain text format across many networks and often through multiple mail servers before arriving at their destination. Essentially, GFI MAX MailEdge's service represents only an additional 'hop' on the Internet before email is delivered to a company's mail server.

GFI MAX MailEdge does not store or make copies of email messages, other than for a short period of time (i.e. for the length that a message may be stored in queue). Additionally, there are stringent security measures in place to prevent any unauthorized physical or electronic access to the GFI MAX MailEdge systems.

Spam Detection and Handling

I already have on-premise anti-spam and anti-virus solutions, how will GFI MAX MailEdge work with this system?

The GFI MAX MailEdge service is designed as a complement for an existing on premise anti-spam/anti-virus solution. No changes need to be made to that existing solution. GFI MAX MailEdge will simply provide a first layer of defense, safely blocking up to 90% of all incoming traffic using techniques such as rate limiting, recipient validation, message source analysis, and optional greylisting. Your existing on-premise solution will continue to filter messages that make it past the first level defense provided by GFI MAX MailEdge.

Do I still need my on-premise solution?

Yes. GFI MAX MailEdge provides a first layer of defense only and is not a full-fledged anti-spam/anti-virus solution. If you are interested in a hosted email security solution to replace your existing on-premise hardware or software, we suggest GFI MAX MailProtection.

What percentage of junk email does GFI MAX MailEdge catch?

The percentage of messages blocked varies by customer and is based on the email traffic patterns for a given domain. In many cases, the GFI MAX MailEdge service will block up to 90% of inbound junk email.

What are whitelists and blacklists?

Whitelists are rules that allow messages to be delivered based on their 'from' email address or domain name, regardless of content. If you would like to guarantee that all messages from yourcustomer.com, for example, will not be blocked, you can simply add that domain to your whitelist. Conversely, blacklists are rules that block messages based on the domain name or email address of the sender. Whitelist and blacklists can also be based on the source IP address of the sending mail server.

Compatibility

Does GFI MAX MailEdge work with Lotus Notes?

Yes. GFI MAX MailEdge works seamlessly with any mail server that you are using. As a managed service, GFI MAX MailEdge is compatible with widely used programs such as Microsoft Exchange, Novell Groupwise, and Lotus Notes, as well as any other mail server software.

Does GFI MAX MailEdge support Macintosh, Linux, or Unix environments?

Yes. GFI MAX MailEdge is a service rather than a product, and no software needs to be installed on your mail server or at workstations. Therefore, GFI MAX MailEdge supports any mail server, any email client, and any operating system(s) in use at a given organization.

If my company hosts email at an external provider, will GFI MAX MailEdge work?

Yes. Many companies use an externally hosted email server, in addition to or in lieu of an internal mail server. GFI MAX MailEdge works correctly regardless of where a company's mail server or servers are located.

Integration

Do we need to integrate GFI MAX MailEdge with our existing mail server?

No - GFI MAX MailEdge will work successfully without any changes to an organization’s existing mail infrastructure and without any integration with that mail infrastructure. For ISPs and enterprise customers, we recommend that GFI MAX MailEdge’s user management and authentication functions be integrated with the customer’s infrastructure to reduce the need for any ongoing management of email accounts.

What options for integration does GFI MAX MailEdge provide?

GFI MAX MailEdge has been architected to integrate seamlessly with a wide array of infrastructures. This ensures that email addresses, aliases, user preferences, and authentication information can be automatically synchronized between GFI MAX MailEdge and an organization’s internal system(s). In addition to integration via standard protocols such as LDAP and LDAPS, GFI MAX MailEdge offers a web service that allows for programmatic domain and user management from virtually any application.

Are there any extra charges for integration?

No. GFI MAX MailEdge views integration as a means to ensure ongoing ease of management for customers, and all features related to integration are included in the standard pricing for the service.

Billing

Are there any set-up fees or implementation costs?

No. Since GFI MAX MailEdge is a managed service, there is no hardware or software to purchase and no one-time fees. There is simply a per-user price, based on the number of users who are enrolled for the service.

How is my organization billed?

GFI MAX MailEdge is a subscription service. Customers generally are billed monthly, with pricing based on the number of email accounts using the service.

Do I have to pay for aliases?

No. Alias accounts are filtered and benefit from the continuity component of the service, but they are not billed.