1. Email is essential to every busi-
ness and Webservio’s Mail Bag-
ging & Anti Spam Solution un-
derstands your need for com-
plete email security from Vi-
ruses, Spam and unwanted
content. This white paper will
introduce you to our solution
and address some of your con-
cerns about routing your email
through a third party.
The Mail Bagging ser-
vice is designed in such a way
that the end users (customers)
retain complete control over
their email. The Anti-Spam solu-
tion utilizes the Simple Mail
Transfer (SMTP) so that the
email sent to you is first routed
through Webservio’s portal first,
where the email filtering occurs,
and then is sent to your net-
work. Although your email is
routed through Webservio, you
do NOT give up control of your
network security.
Corporate use of man-
aged email security services is
increasing. In its May 2002
issue, Information Security
Magazine raised the question:
Can external services safely
help you handle “the manage-
ment of e-mail security”? Their
answer: “A resounding ‘yes’.” All
types of enterprises use man-
aged services to filter email,
from the Fortune 500 to small,
five to ten person companies.
Intercepting emails can be a
difficult task. However, it has
been known to be done. On
their journey from sender to
recipient, they travel the Inter-
net and can be read by some-
one who is technically capable
and knows the emails they are
looking for. Because SMTP
looks for the easiest delivery
path, emails are subject to
queuing.
SMTP is an open-
recipient based protocol, which
means that the receiving Mes-
sage Transfer Agent has to
accept all the emails sent to it.
This is the reason why networks
are susceptible to email-borne
threats since all SMTP emails:
malicious or not are guaranteed
to be accepted, even though
some of them may be harmful.
This is where Webservio’s Anti-
Spam solution comes into play:
filtering out email-borne threats
before they reach the network.
W H I T E P A P E R : M A I L B A G G I N G
& A N T I S P A M S O L U T I O N S
C O N T E N T S :
I N T R O D U C T I O N 1
H O W E M A I L
U S I N G S M T P
W O R K S
1
H O W M A I L
B A G G I N G
W O R K S
2
B E N E F I T S O F
M A I L B A G G I N G
2
B E N E F I T S O F
A N T I S P A M
2
A D D I T I O N A L
I N F O R M A T I O N
3
H O W D O E S I T
M A K E S E C U R E
F O R Y O U
3
W E B S E R V I O
P R I V A C Y
I N F O R M A T I O N
3
N E T W O R K R E -
D U N D A N C Y
4
C O N C L U S I O N 4
S P E C I A L P O I N T S
O F I N T E R E S T :
• Nearly 12 billion
emails are sent every-
day.
• Spam accounts for
nearly 40% of all
emails.
• Spam costs rose to
nearly $10 billion this
year.
H O W E M A I L U S I N G S M T P W O R K S
I N T R O D U C T I O N
2. When an email message is
sent to a valid email address,
but the mail server associ-
ated with that email address
is down, the email message
is bounced back to the
sender as undeliverable.
When you subscribe to Web-
servio’s Mail Bagging service,
your email is protected by
backup mail servers that bag
email messages in the event
of a server failure. Messages
sent to your address during
server downtime will be
saved until the mail server is
brought back online.
If your company
hosts its own mail server, you
can enhance your email reli-
ability by using Webservio’s
mail servers, as a remotely
located backup solution. If
your mail server crashes or
your Internet Line fails tem-
porarily, you will still receive
email sent by your clients
during your technical difficul-
ties, rather than bouncing
back your customers’ mes-
sages as undeliverable. Your
messages will be forwarded
to you when your mail system
is up and running again.
emails a day. Lets assume
that each employee spends 5
seconds for waiting to re-
ceive, reviewing it and then
deleting it.
The cost to the
above scenario works out to
be $7222.22 per year in lost
salary or about $27 everyday
dealing with spam. Approxi-
mately 20 days of the year
Using a very simple calcula-
tion, we will outline as to how
much spam costs an organi-
zation. Assuming a company
has 100 employees. The
workdays per year for an
employee are 260. Also, let’s
assume that each employee
gets paid on an average of
$20/hr. On an average, every
person receives atleast 10
will be the lost productivity
when combining lost time of
all the workers.
Considering the
above scenario, Webservio’s
Anti-Spam solution will pay
for itself in less than 180
days and improve productiv-
ity.
• Remote Backup location
• Backup server when
your mail server goes
down.
• No more “Undeliverable
messages” to your cus-
tomers when systems go
down
• 99.999% uptime guar-
antee
• Automatic forwarding of
messages to your mail
server when its back up
and running.
When email delivery be-
comes mission critical in a
variety of situations, how do
you benefit from the Mail
Bagging service offered by
Webservio. Some of the im-
portant features you will gain
from our service:
“Affordable,
secure & reliable
backup mail
solution.”
Page 2H O W M A I L B A G G I N G W O R K S .
B E N E F I T S O F M A I L B A G G I N G W I T H W E B S E R V I O
B E N E F I T S O F W E B S E R V I O ’ S A N T I S P A M S O L U T I O N
3. Does Webservio’s Mail Bag-
ging solution increase the
risks of sending email? The
answer is No. On an average,
a single email is sent through
about 8-9 intermediaries as it
travels from the sender to the
recipient. The Mail Bagging
service is an additional Inter-
mediary in this journey and
thereby does not add any
additional risk.
Using our Mail Bag-
ging or Anti-Spam solution
would require changing your
MX record so that your email
is routed through our portal
before receiving it. When you
use our services, you change
your MX record to make the
address of Webservio as the
primary address, thereby all
email sent to you is first sent
via Webservio first.
Webservio will then filter the
emails and redirect to your
address.
ter of milli-seconds.
Webser-
vio’s employees do not have
access to your email. If you
choose to use the Anti-Spam
solution, then your quaran-
tine will not be viewed also
because the email messages
are segmented. The only
action from our end that is
done to your email is that
Some customers may have
concern that Webservio’s
employees may have access
to their email. But Webser-
vio’s architecture makes the
viewing of your email inher-
ently difficult even for Web-
servio. Webservio does not
store or acknowledges re-
ceipt of an email. The filtering
process takes place in a mat-
they are processed electroni-
cally through our filters.
When you point your MX re-
cord to Webservio, we en-
courage you to list only our
MX record. This gives you an
added benefit that it is ex-
tremely difficult for the out-
side world to send email-
borne threats to you without
directly going through Web-
servio.
Also, since you are in direct
control of your MX records,
you can remove this function-
ality and switch to your own
mail server, any time.
A domain name may have
multiple MX records. When a
domain has multiple MX re-
cords, then priorities are set
for these records. This en-
sures that the mail is sent to
a certain server first and to
the others only if the primary
server is unavailable to re-
ceive messages.
“Listing our MX
record gives you
the benefit of
sheltering your
mail server from
email-borne
threats.”
Page 3A D D I T I O N A L I N F O R M A T I O N
H O W D O E S I T M A K E S E C U R E F O R Y O U ?
W E B S E R V I O P R I V A C Y I N F O R M A T I O N
4. Webservio understands the
importance of email and that
is why we offer this premium
service not only as an add-on
but as a solution.
Our network operations are
monitored 24x7x365. Our
data center has very limited
access and is backed up by a
diesel power generator.
Our network connectivity is
with a Tier-1 provider making
the chances of our network
going down absolutely mini-
mal.
purpose for any organization
which would like to have an
effective solution with mini-
mum cost.
Also, Anti-spam
solution will include the mail
bagging features giving it a
two pronged advantage.
Email based threats are innu-
merable and constant. Suc-
cessfully protecting your net-
work requires constant effort
and extensive resources
which is where Webservio
comes into the picture.
Mail bagging can be a very
effective solution for busi-
ness who would like to have
the assurance of not losing
email in this traffic. Since
Webservio already possesses
a framework in its data facil-
ity for its implementation, it
helps us provide this service
to you at a cost effective
price. In-house implementa-
tion of this methodology
would require considerable
investment which defeats the
“With a
99.999% uptime
guarantee, we
make sure that
your email
service is never
interrupted.”
Page 4N E T W O R K R E D U N D A N C Y
C O N C L U S I O N
W E B S E R V I O I N C .