Spam accounts for 70% of email messages. Over 3% of emails have malicious attachments. 91% of successful hacks begin with email attacks. It all adds up to the urgency of protecting your email.

Progent has partnered with leading IT security companies to offer small and mid-size businesses Email Guard, a hybrid security solution that uses cloud-based resources and on-premises security gateway hardware to provide multi-tiered defense against spam, email-borne viruses, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and other email-based threats. In addition, Email Guard’s security gateway hardware provides outbound email encryption, enforces your internal content policies to keep sensitive data from leaking outside of your organization, and helps keep your organization off spam block lists by filtering outbound spam and viruses.

Progent's email security consultants can assist you to design and implement your Email Guard deployment, help you determine which email security gateway appliances are the best fit for your needs, configure your gateway, integrate Email Guard with Microsoft Exchange Server or any other email platform, set up policies for filtering inbound and outbound email, configure outbound encryption, plan and deploy high-availability topology that can include clustered security gateways, set up a streamlined cloud-based management system that utilizes takes advantage of delegated administration, and provide training, ongoing consulting support and troubleshooting.

Key Features of Email Guard
Email Guard is a complete solution for protecting inbound and outbound email. Email Guard offers these key features:

  • Spam Protection uses heuristic-rules that analyze IP addresses, message content, and even images/
  • Zero-hour Virus Protection offers multi-tiered scanning and 24x7 real-time updates
  • Cloud-based Pre-filtering prevents the vast majority of email threats from ever reaching your security perimeter
  • On-premises Gateway Appliance is purpose-built for deep analysis of inbound and outbound traffic
  • Cloud-based Management with delegated administration rights centralizes and simplifies policy and configuration control
  • Outbound Filtering provides policy-based Content Filtering for Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Data Leakage Protection and blocks outbound spam and viruses
  • Encryption uses AES with 256-bit keys and automatically protects outbound email that meets your policy settings
  • Rate Control blocks spambots and controls outbound email rate based on IP address or sender's email address
  • Denial of Service (DoS) Attack Protection keeps your network from being disabled by an overload of malicious spam
  • Directory Harvest Attack (DHA) protection keeps spammers from stealing and selling your users' email addresses
  • Low False Positive Rate is an industry-leading 0.01% before you apply any of the available custom optimization options
  • Internal Email Protection with Exchange protects email that stays within your security perimeter, never reaching your gateway
Email Guard delivers these features efficiently by using a hybrid architecture that combines cloud and local resources to provide world-class protection, performance and manageability in a package that small and mid-sized businesses can afford.

The reliability of your email system is also improved due to the hardened, geographically dispersed data centers behind Email Guard’s cloud infrastructure. Data center uptime averages 99.999 percent, far higher than can be achieved by the email servers of most small or mid-size businesses. If your email server or internal network infrastructure fails, Progent’s Microsoft-certified consultants and Cisco-certified network engineers can provide immediate online expertise to get you up and running quickly.

Inbound Email Protection
All inbound email secured by Email Guard passes through the Cloud Protection Layer, which uses advanced data centers and massive computing grids to block 95% of spam and most email carrying viruses and other malware. Email that clears this first level of filtering is subjected to deep analysis by purpose-built on-premises security gateway hardware that provides multi-level inspection including OCR technology to detect image spam. The Cloud Protection layer and the email security gateway are continually updated in real time by the cloud-based Update Center, a technology center staffed 24x7x365 by security experts to provide zero-hour protection against the latest threats without requiring the intervention of your management personnel. For disaster recovery, the Cloud Protection Layer offers email spooling, which can store all your inbound email for up to 96 hours or redirect it to an alternate destination in case your on-premises data center is disrupted.

Email Guard's Inbound Protection

Email Guard provides multi-tiered zero-hour protection for inbound email

Outbound Email Protection
The outbound filtering capability of Email Guard prevents costly data leaks and protects your reputation as a trusted source of email. Email Guard provides Data Loss Protection (DLP) through policy-based content filtering. This prevents users from inadvertently releasing valuable or private information through email messages. Leaked information can violate regulatory requirements and can result in loss of competitive advantage, identity theft, and even litigation. The Email Guard security gateway appliance comes with standard content filters that include HIPAA, Social Security Numbers, credit card numbers. In addition, you can define custom policies for filtering content based on keywords, categories, or other factors. Email Guard allows you to use content filtering policies for automatically blocking, quarantining or encrypting email messages.

Email Guard's Outound Protection

Email Guard's outbound protection includes policy-based content filtering to prevent data leaks

Outbound filtering can also block spam and viruses sent by internal computers that have been compromised, which is a serious vulnerability in BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environments. Organizations which allow spam and viruses to be sent out can be placed on block lists, or "blacklisted". This loss of reputation can hurt productivity and profits.

Outbound Email Encryption
Email Guard uses a cloud-based Message Center to encrypt and deliver outbound email. You can configure multiple policies for deciding which emails should be encrypted, and the entire process is handled automatically. The on-premises security gateway sends email to be encrypted to the Message Center using a secure TLS connection. There the messages are encrypted using the advanced AES-256 standard and stored for retrieval. The Message Center sends a notice to the recipient and includes a web link that permits the recipient to retrieve the decrypted email. Any replies are also encrypted at the Message Center.

Email Guard's Outound Encryption

Email Guard offers policy-based outbound email encryption

A plug-in for Microsoft Exchange allows users to encrypt emails on an individual basis. For additional details about Email Guard outbound email encryption, see Email Guard technology and architecture.

Technologies Behind Email Guard for Blocking Email Threats
Email Guard's cloud-based filtering resources, technology centers and gateway appliances combine open source mechanisms with proprietary techniques developed by Progent's partners to protect against spam and other email-based threats. Anti-spam/virus techniques include:

  • IP reputation analysis
  • sender authentication
  • recipient verification
  • predictive sender profiling
  • virus databases
  • pre-defined and custom policies
  • rate control
  • signature analysis
  • intent analysis
  • image analysis
  • Bayesian analysis
  • spam rules scoring thresholds
Types of email-based threats that Email Guard is designed to block include:
  • spam
  • viruses
  • Trojans
  • worms
  • polymorphic viruses
  • spoofing
  • phishing
  • Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
  • Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs)
  • Spyware
For a glossary of email security terms, visit Glossary of Terms Related to Spam Filtering Technology.

The reliability of your email system is also improved due to the hardened, geographically dispersed data centers behind Email Guard’s cloud infrastructure. Data center uptime averages 99.999 percent, far higher than can be achieved by the email servers of most small or mid-size businesses. If your email server or internal network infrastructure fails, Progent’s Microsoft-certified consultants and Cisco-certified network engineers can provide immediate online expertise to get you up and running quickly.

How Progent Can help You Deploy and Manage Email Guard
Progent’s certified email security experts can work with you to develop a comprehensive email security strategy that protects you from email-borne threats and helps you stay in compliance with government regulations and industry standards. Progent can help you plan and implement a smooth rollout of Email Guard, tune your configuration to match your environment, develop auditing and reporting practices, train your management and end users on how to avoid spam and prevent virus propagation, and develop enforceable email policies.

In addition, Progent can upgrade, troubleshoot, and monitor your entire email and network infrastructure based on industry best practices and Progent’s extensive experience as certified Microsoft and Cisco experts.

Progent's Microsoft-certified consultants offer comprehensive onsite IT expertise including Microsoft Exchange Server 2016 consulting, Exchange Server 2013 support, plus support and migration services for legacy version of Exchange Server. Progent also offers Windows Server consulting as well as expertise for the entire family of Microsoft Servers. Progent's migration, integration, update, and support services include planning and system design, installation and deployment, project management and documentation, onsite and remote technical support and troubleshooting, Help Desk Call Center, expert security consulting, and turn-key outsourcing and co-sourcing.

Contact Progent for Email Solutions
If you want to find out more about using Progent's Email Guard managed services or if you need Progent's help to troubleshoot or enhance your email system, call 800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

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