Here is why ITA Secure Messaging is such an important asset to have in your company. Blocking spam is a "given" feature in ITA Secure Messaging. The following reasons talk about benefits other than email filtering. 1 - Messages to invalid users SMTP server accepts messages for invalid users as well. For example, anyone can send messages to xxxxxxx@yourcompany.com and the server will accept this messages. This creates two problems: Network saturation due to increased traffic Your server will generate a non-delivery report for this invalid user. This gives an opportunity for a spammer to send their spam messages via your server. Consider the following scenario. John wants to spam Mary whose email address is mary@hotmail.com. Rather than sending message directly to Mary, John sends the message to your email server with the following values. To: xxxxxx@yourcompany.com From: mary@hotmail.com Subject: Refinancing at low rates Notice that xxxxxx@yourcompany.com is an invalid user. Your server will accept this message and later on will generate a Non-Delivery report with the original message as an attachment. This Non-Delivery report will be sent to Mary instead of John since the sender used her email address in the "From" field. ITA Secure Messaging queries your SMTP server server for valid users before accepting any messages. Thus reducing network traffic and any need for generating non-delivery reports. 2 - Email statistics Do you know how many messages are going through your server? You probably have some idea of how many messages are being sent to valid inboxes in your company, but what about the messages that never show up in any inbox. ITA Secure Messaging will tell you exactly how many emails are coming in and going out of your company. It will allow you to answer the following questions. Where are messages coming from (IP Address, country, and sender's email) Who is getting these messages How many messages were processes (inbound and outbound) 3 - Protect your company's intellectual property Prevent any confidential document or memo going outside your company via email. Using the policy violation alerts in ITA secure messaging you can forward and/or block any message that violates your company policies. 4 - Intrusion detection Do you know how many users connect to your email server but do not send any email? The intention of such connections is not to send email but to gather information about your server, network, users id and passwords. ITA Secure Messaging's intrusion detection system will tell you exactly who is running such queries against your server. Click here for more information on Intrusion detection. 5 - Hide your server's identity SMTP server exposes its identity to any outside user. It provides the vendor name, version number and sometimes internal IP addresses and/or domain name of your server to the outside world, which is very useful information for any malicious user. ITA Secure Messaging allows you to hide the identity of your server from any such user; hence, minimizing the potential of an attack or misuse. 6 - Filter inbound and outbound Same installation of ITA Secure Messaging can check for both inbound and outbound traffic. ITA Secure Messaging comes with two SMTP servers: Proxy and Staging. Depending upon your network configuration either both or one can be turned on to process messages. Click here for more information regarding the Staging and Proxy server. 7 - Outstanding technical support Free technical assistance is just a phone call away. ITA Networks strives to create the highest quality products. However, there may come a time when you require technical support. Give us a call and we will help you solve your problem right over the phone. You can also send us email at support@itanetworks.com. 8 - Let your users manage their own rules There three types of users in ITA Secure Messaging: Administrator - With super-user previleges. Rule changes have global affect. Domain Administrator - Manages one domain and rule changes apply to one domain. Individual users - Actual end user. Any rule modified by such user only affect them. No one else is affected. Every user can optionally get an email on daily basis summarizing the quarantined messages from their INBOX. They can restore and change rules right from that email message. Alternatively, they can also log in to a website to accomplish the same task. 9 - Flexible installation Flexible installation options provide the administrator ability to install ITA Secure Messaging on the existing e-mail server, separate dedicated server, or as an appliance. Create separate spam policy for each domain in a multi e-mail domain environment. 10 - Message disclaimers Configurable discliamer text can be appended to all or some messages going through the server. This can contain confidentiality statements or any other message you desire.