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Xyden Presents: Postini - Spam Filtering on Steroids
 In November of 2006, Xyden completed the steps
needed to become a Postini Partner and Reseller. Postini offers Enterprise-Class filtering that works.
The road to becoming a Postini Partner was not long for us. We had heard that they were the best in the filtering
industry, but we'd never had the oppotunity to prove it, until now.
While researching other solutions (i.e. Symantec Brightmail, Barracuda, WatchGuard, etc), we ran cost
comparisons and consistently came up with the fact that Postini is fairly close in price to these other
in-house hardware and software solutions.
The beauty of Postini, however, is that it's a managed service. It's managed by people who do nothing more than identify spam all day long. Imagine having an IT staffer whose sole job was to identify spam and update the necessary hardware and software solutions to protect your company against spam and unwanted emails. With Postini, this becomes reality at a fraction of the cost of the full-time body.
The trouble with in-house solutions is that the technology MUST be updated regularly to remain effecitve.
Postini, a managed service, offloads this burden from the IT Staff and makes updares transparent to everyone.
Based upon what we've seen and heard, the main difference between Postini and its competition is simple -
Postini works.
You can learn more about Postini by going through the bullets below, or, if you're ready to take the next step,
contact us now and request a risk-free test drive of Postini for 21-days.
The Postini 411:
 How does it work?
 How does it work?
- With Postini, you must have your own domain name (www.yourdomain.com).
Postini will not work directly with Hotmail, Yahoo, or other free email accounts where
you have no control over your domain name's Mail Exchanger records.
Postini works as an intermediary between your mail server and the rest of the Internet.
You will need to update your MX records in the DNS system to point to Postini's mail servers.
Postini then filters the email and forwards clean email to your mail server. This means
that there is absolutely NO hardware for your to purchase, maintain, upgrade, secure, etc.
What about load balancing, redundancy, and spooling?
What about load balancing, redundancy, and spooling?
- With mail servers located around the country, Postini is probably
better equipped for redundancy and load balancing than most small businesses with a single
location.
Furthermore, if Postini ever detects that your mail server is offline, Postini
will automatically spool all mail until your server is back online.
Postini can also setup to notify you or an IT staffer via a secondary email address or maybe SMS to your cell phone
in the event that your mail server goes offline. This way, you know before your users do that there's a
problem and can nip it in the bud.
Finally, if your mail server or Internet connection ever did go down, you have the ability to forward certain email
accounts to external domains before the email even hits your network. For instance, Postini can forward a copy of mail addressed
to ceo@company.com a cell phone, hotmail, gmail account, or wherever in addition to the mailbox on your mail server.
This provides the means for a quick and ready backup plan to receive email, if only temporarily, in the event of a mail server down.
What about Directory Harvest Attacks?
What about Directory Harvest Attacks?
- One of the cool things about Postini is its ability to offload DHA threats from your
network thereby freeing up more bandwidth for your users. We've seen one client hit with a DHA that lasted
for several hours and peaked around 600,000 messages, but his mail server and network never took a hit as Postini
absorbed it all.
Ok, so where does the spam go?
Ok, so where does the spam go?
- First, Postini detects if the spam originated from an IP address that has
been 'misbehaving'. If the email originated from one of these IP addresses, the email is identifed
as blatant spam and deleted without further ado. Otherwise, you can setup all spam for an organizaiton
to go to a single quarantine location, you can setup one person to manage a spam quarantine for a group
of people, or your can setup each individual user with access to their own spam quarantine.
What about virus protection?
What about virus protection?
- Postini incorporates a McAfee virus scanner into their email filtering
service, so email borne viruses are detected and stopped before they even hit the perimeter
of your network. Once a virus is detected, you've got a few options. The most common option is
to setup an automatic quarantine of all infected emails. The body of the email can be safely
reviewed in the quarantine and/or deleted.
What does it cost?
What does it cost?
- Pricing is dependent upon a number of factors including: the number of mailboxes
you filtered each month, the number of domain names requiring filtering, and whether or not
monthly or annual billing is selected. For an exact quote, please contact us
and we'll be happy to get one out to you ASAP.
How long does it take to setup?
How long does it take to setup?
- Not long at all. We are typically able to setup most accounts in a matter of days.
With no software to install and no hardware to setup, the effort required by you or your IT staff is minimal.
Simply provide us with a list of email addresses, aliases, and a few other details, and that will be all.
What about email aliases?
What about email aliases?
- Users are allowed to have a maximum of 5 email aliases. This should help
in the event a user has multiple addresses, perhaps from a name change after getting married,
the user maintains a generic support email address, etc. If more aliases are needed for a certain
name, these can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
What if we don't like the service?
What if we don't like the service?
- Each account we setup starts with a 21-day risk free trial.
If, for any reason, you determine the service is not for you or your company, you have 21-days from go-live
to cancel without cost or obligation. Simply change your MX records back to your own server and we part ways, no harm,
no foul, no cost to you. If you decide to remain with the service after the 21-day trial period, billing commences the
day of go-live.
We need to send encrypted email. How?
We need to send encrypted email. How?
- Postini offers an email encryption service. Contact us for more details.
What other services does Postini offer?
What other services does Postini offer?
- Email Encryption
- Email Archival
- Instant Message Filtering
Contact us for more details.
Got more questions? Contact us and we'll get back to you ASAP.
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"So far your [spam] fix must be working, BIG reduction last few days. . . "
"Before Postini, we were losing legitimate emails as a result of Directory Harvest Attacks (DHA) maxing out our mail server's connection limit. Now, concurrent connections are down to 6-8 at a time instead of 250+ 24/7."
"24 hours after go-live, Postini offloaded a DHA against our domain that lasted for several hours and peaked at over 600,000 messages an hour."
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