Praetor Feature / Benefit List

Customer support

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Rule Wizard

YES

Rule creation is simple and provides new capabilities to reflect your own experiences; especially useful for creating rules that deal with business issues other than spam filtering

Rule script language accessible by customer's programmers

YES, VBScript

For the ultimate in custom rules, edit the script to add your own special functions and create new applications that use email as a triggering event

Different rules for different users

YES

Assign rules to departments, groups, and/or individuals

Individual rule enable/disable starting with the very next message processed

YES

No disruptions to services

Rule templates

YES

Easily create variants of an existing rule

Allow for rule exceptions

YES

Increase rule flexibility by providing exceptions to the conditions

Auto notifications for rejected messages

YES

Send a notice that the message was unacceptable to the admin, sender, recipient, any email address, or any combination of those

Auto re-route to a different address other than the intended recipient

YES

Send notice to the compliance officer or censor, and do not deliver to the intended recipient

Admin console to manage quarantined mail for all users

YES

Ease of administration

Log Viewer administrator access via web browser

YES

Remotely review and release quarantined mail for any user

Web browser access for users to review and release personal quarantined mail

YES

Eliminate administrators' burden by letting users review and release their quarantined messages

Automatic message management

YES

Create rules to automatically delete email meeting your criteria

GUI configuration interface

YES

Admin-friendly look and feel 

Scalable distributed architecture

YES

Fully multi-threaded, grows with your business and can be distributed across multiple filtering machines while accessing common log and token databases

Automatic daily maintenance tasks

YES

Use Windows task scheduler to age and purge old message files that were archived and quarantined, reducing administrator involvement

E-mail content filter

YES

Filter SMTP traffic transmitted to and from your network

Lexical scanning

YES via custom VB script code

Custom script to provide keyword scanning specific to your business

Keyword weighting

YES

Assign scores to keywords and restrict messages that exceed a specific total score

Filter for authorized senders/receivers

YES

Limit distribution of confidential files to authorized persons

Manage attachments by file type and name

YES, even use regular expressions

Filter images, music, audio, executables, games, etc.

Manage messages and attachments by size

YES

Reject, quarantine, re-direct or archive messages based on your acceptable use  

Manage by textual content: Subject line

YES

Manage by textual content: Message body

YES

Manage by textual content: Attachment

YES

Manage by number of recipients

YES

Manage by number of attachments

YES

Manage domain name and email address

YES

ESMTP support

YES with auto fallback to SMTP

Block excessively large messages

Bayesian content filter

YES

Advanced statistical technique to detect spam.  Default token database has >92% spam detection rate with false positive rate of less than 0.5%

Train the Bayesian content filter

YES

Improve spam detection accuracy by training the Bayesian filter with your own spam and good message samples

Heuristic content filter

YES

Advanced weighted rules allow scoring of the message header and body for the presence of different spam techniques

Advanced spam filtering using studied spam techniques

YES >12 supplied

Review of thousands of spam samples to deduce complex combinations of conditions beyond simplistic "Free cash" string searches

Anti-spam rules-based capability 

YES

Customizable spam source blocking using your own rules

Custom lists

YES

Create your own lists and use to test against selectable message header fields

Weighted words list to create new custom rules

YES

Allows for a custom rule to score based on phrases found in the message body

DNS blackhole listservers

YES, multiple

Realtime DNS blackhole lists such as MAPS RBL, Spamhaus, etc.  Praetor can query more than one such blackhole list.

Bypass list for DNS blackhole list

YES

Bypass list allows message reception from trading partners even if their mail servers are being blacklisted

Ignored IP list for trusted servers

YES

Correctly identify the IP address of the true external source even when Praetor is several hops downstream of the message point of entry; in this way, the correct IP address will be checked against the DNSBL

Relay block / anti-relay

YES

Prevents spammers from using you as a relay host

Allow relaying exceptions 

YES

Allows relaying to trusted organizations.  Praetor permits specific IP address or an IP address range for each exception.

Detect and eliminate Reverse NDR attack

YES

Rule to handle this form of spammer attack that makes your mail server into an unwitting indirect mail relay

Detect e-mail spoofing

YES

Detect when mail is from anonymous sources

Detect advance fee fraud 

YES

Detect common scams to obtain company banking information (Ex: Nigerian 419)

Detect URL obfuscation

YES

Detect common spammer technique that try to hide their URL typically because it is pornographic

Detect suspicious spam address

YES

Detect bogus sender addresses that spammers programmatically generate

Detect externally referenced pages

YES

Detect common spammer technique that refer to external pages and graphics to deliver content while actual text is nonsense

Detect variable content in message

YES

Detect common spammer technique to embed URLs for opting out that contain information to identify the recipient

Detect embedded and encoded content

YES

Detect sophisticated spammer technique that can bypass most filters

Virus detection at the Gateway

YES

Identify and quarantine viruses before they enter the network.  This is performed more efficiently by testing attachments against a banned or suspicious list of filename and/or extension patterns.  This method has been 100% effective since Praetor was introduced in 1999.

Anti-virus keyword and code command scanning

YES

Identify new viruses by name, subject or 'harmful' code

Anti-virus filtering by attachment type

YES

Filter new virus attachments by the file type until your virus scanner is updated

E-mail logging in real-time

YES

Watch email traffic flow in realtime

E-mail logging to SQL database

YES

Uses free Microsoft SQL Desktop Edition (MSDE) or SQL Server

Detailed and customizable Reports

YES

Allows management insight into e-mail usage patterns.  MS Access source code provided for modification of report format.

Identify problem or suspect users

YES

Reports show who are the most prolific users

Identify problem or suspect mail sources

YES

Reports show IP addresses that are sources for the most frequent violations based on tests of DNSBL, Reverse NDR, or other Praetor rules

Comprehensive message traffic logging

YES

Records all e-mail traffic information across days, weeks, etc.

Message stamping

YES

Add disclaimers to messages.  Praetor's rule-based approach allows you to have different disclaimers for different conditions.

Send notification of attachment being quarantined

YES

Send notices to administrator, sender, intended recipient, or any specified email address

Different disclaimer based upon specific condition

YES

Stamp messages specific to particular departments for branding, etc.

Disclaimer at beginning or end of message

YES

Configure where on a message the stamp appears

HTML for disclaimer

YES

Easy configuration of fonts, colors, sizes, etc. for stamps

Use your email editor to create HTML

Ability to prepend or append the subject

YES

Allows more information to be passed to the local recipient in the message

Ability to pass on the original message while inserting a notice of the triggered rule and specific reason, etc. as part of the notice text

YES

Allows more information to be passed to the local recipient in the message

Ability to add message header with rule and the specific reason the message is filtered

YES

Allows more information to be passed to the local recipient in the message

Ability to add new X- message header

YES, up to 3 new X-headers lines

Allows more information to be passed to the local recipient in the message

Need to delay transmission for large message

NO

This is unnecessary due to multi-threaded and multi-processor architecture.

Delay sending of large messages for off peak times - a feature that is especially needed if the SMTP transmitter is single threaded in nature

Auto-replies based on conditions you specify

YES

Send auto responses to emails based on keywords

Run external VB script code

YES

Create commands to call pagers, cellphones, etc.

Operational logging

YES

Services log their activity to aid troubleshooting 

Can the correct DNSBL query be performed when the antispam product is not at the Internet boundary and so does not receive mail directly from the sending mail host?

YES

Useful for determining true source of spam and attack for blacklisting, instead of trusted mail servers within your network or at the ISP

Review summary of quarantined messages from the Praetor administration tool

YES

Review all quarantined messages to see who sends them, who are the recipients, size, subject, etc.

User review of personal quarantined messages via web browser

YES

Review of personal email that was quarantined with ability to release it.  Filters are available to specify the sender address and subject.

Record the reason for the messages to be quarantined

YES

Identify the rule that quarantined the message and the specific reason showing any disallowed strings

Review contents of quarantined messages

YES

View the actual quarantined message itself

Actions to dispose of quarantined messages

Accept, Reject, Redirect, Return-to-Sender

How simply can the messages be disposed and what actions to take upon them

Message templates for return-to-sender response

YES

For simplicity, you can return a message to its sender by using a pre-written template

Optional actions to add to whitelist

YES,
domain names

Add the sender domain to the whitelist used for avoiding quarantine in the future

Optional actions to add to blacklist

YES,
domain names and IP addresses

Add the sender domain and IP address to the blacklist to avoid receiving email in the future

Show who receives the most email

YES

Identify potential abusers of email

Show who sends the most email

YES

Identify potential abusers of email

Show what domains receive the most email from your users

YES

Identify possible leaks of confidential information to your competitors

Show what domains send the most email from your users

YES

Show what rules catch the most spam

YES

Refine your rules' effectiveness

Show IP source and frequency of DNSBL rejections

YES

Put the most active sources onto the SMTP Server's banned IP list

Show IP source and frequency of Reverse NDR attacks

YES

Put the most active sources onto the SMTP Server's banned IP list

Show IP source and frequency of messages triggering active rules

YES

Identify source of banned content such as viral infection or pornography