What Is It?

Outbound Filtering is also called Smart Hosting is included with the Hosted Exchange service, along with the Email Encryption service.  It can also be a stand alone service.  See below for stand-alone pricing and conditions.

Outbound Filtering scans all of your outbound mail for spam and viruses.  This prevents someone in your company from unknowingly passing along malicious viruses or malware.  Also, if an employee email account gets hacked (almost always because of an old, weaker password) outbound filtering prevents the hacker from sending out thousands of spam messages from your company name.

Email Encryption is true end-to-end content encryption.  See below for details.

It’s Included in the Hosted Exchange Service

If you have the Hosted Exchange service, this is all included.  The Outbound Filtering just runs in the background protecting your accounts and your company’s email sending reputation.

As a Hosted Exchange customer you are probably concerned mostly about the Email Encryption feature.

Email Encryption (also included)

Email Encryption is true end-to-end content encryption.  You click an Encrypt button in Outlook and the mail is sent with the contents fully encrypted. [tooltips content=’If you are using a mail client other than Outlook there is no button but you can add text to the Subject line that will trigger the encryption process.’][/tooltips]

This is different from “in-transit” encryption, like TLS (Transport Layer Security) which is a cryptographic protocol that protects internet communications. All of our email services attempt to use TLS and will accept all incoming TLS email connections, however, we do not require it. [tooltips content=’The reason is that you might communicate with others who have older systems or do not have TLS enabled. We do not want those messages blocked. They might be important to you. However you can change this setting to require TLS either FROM and/or TO some of the people you communicate with, or all of the people you communicate with.’][/tooltips] End-to-end encryption means the message stays encrypted upon delivery.

Email Encryption: How it Works

There is only one way to achieve true end-to-end encryption between two people who have never sent mail to each other. There is an intermediate mail server that stores mail fully encrypted. This is how all encryption services of this type work:

• The sender sends an email after clicking the encrypt button in Outlook. [tooltips content=’The button is added to the Outlook ribbon via an add-on/plugin. This is optional and the user can still send encrypted messages if they do not want to use the plugin. But it does make it easier.’][/tooltips]
• This message does not show up in the recipient’s Inbox. Instead, it is routed to a secure third-party mail server, in this case a server run by Barracuda Networks (whose spam firewalls we use).
• That third-party secure mail server sends a message to the recipient saying they have a secure message and provides a link to view it.
• The recipient logs into the secure server and views the message. It’s basically secure webmail. The recipient can reply from the secure server and that message will also be fully encrypted.
• Any reply will trigger the same procedure…the original sender will receive a message saying they got an encrypted email and must also log into the secure server to view, reply, etc.

Email Encryption: Setup

There is additional setup needed to activate the encryption feature, but it’s pretty simple. We just need to create an address, postmaster@UsersDomain.com (their actual domain name) and then send a setup/confirmation email to that address from the spam firewall. Once that message is received and confirmed the encryption service is activated. Again, this service is included with our Hosted Exchange service. This can be a stand-alone service also…

Stand-Alone Service (Encryption and Smart Hosting)

These services work essentially the same as described above.  The only additional technical requirement is that you must be sending all email from an identifiable static IP address(s).  We need to allow that IP address(s) on our servers.  We cannot accommodate you if you are using Office 365, Gmail, or other services where you do not have a static IP.

Pricing for Stand-Alone Service

If you are currently on a blacklist and need immediate on-boarding for our Smart Hosting service, we can help, but you will charged a minimum of three months service up-front, and you will be required to show that you are no longer compromised (no one is spamming from your domain).  If you need help identifying which of your accounts are sending spam, we can assist, but consulting fees may apply.  Please Contact Us if this is your situation.  It’s ok, we see this a lot.  We’re here to help.