* Mirapoint’s MailHurdle restricts messages bound for an e-mail server
One of the keys to effective enterprise spam management is to stop spam as far back in the network as possible. If you process spam at the desktop, you’ve paid for all the bandwidth and storage necessary to receive, process and deliver spam to each end user. If you block it at the server, you save on bandwidth, but you’re still devoting e-mail server processing cycles to dealing with spam. Blocking spam before you have to even figure out that it is spam can save processor cycles and make e-mail systems more efficient.
Mirapoint has just announced MailHurdle, an adjunct to its messaging management appliances. MailHurdle is what its name implies: a series of hurdles that e-mail has to cross at the edge of a network to reach a messaging server.
For example, MailHurdle accepts e-mail only from SMTP servers that are RFC-compliant and from gateways that exhibit standard protocol behavior. E-mail from non-compliant servers can be blocked, or the mail flow can be reduced.
MailHurdle allows bypassing of its blocking capabilities for individual users, user groups and IP addresses, allowing the whitelisting of trusted senders. MailHurdle also protects against directory-harvest attacks and can identify potentially harmful SMTP activity, such as a large volume of e-mail from an IP address. In Mirapoint’s testing, the company has found that about 80% of unwanted e-mail traffic can be eliminated before any spam or virus processing has to be performed by the messaging system.
MailHurdle’s fundamental advantage is that it pushes the processing of unwanted e-mail closer to the sender and therefore reduces the impact of junk and malicious e-mail on an enterprise. Because this can reduce the processing requirement for an enterprise e-mail system, it might be able to delay investments in more storage, beefier servers, etc., and could reduce the total cost of ownership for a messaging system.
The downside is that spammers are getting smarter, and so MailHurdle might become less effective over time as spammers learn to circumvent the protections it offers. However, at least in the interim, MailHurdle is certainly worthy of consideration in the ongoing battle against spam and more damaging e-mail content.
