Cloud Spam Filter MX

A cloud spam filter MX – the abbreviated title for a cloud-based spam filter for mail exchangers – is one of the easiest and most versatile methods for preventing unwanted emails and protecting your network against email-borne dangers.

A cloud spam filter for Microsoft Exchange is easy to set up, updates in real time and can be managed from any Internet-connected device.

Like the majority of cloud-based applications, a cloud-based spam filter for mail exchangers has no capital expense, it can work on every operating system, and has no limit on the number of users. Organizations simply subscribe to a suppliers’ service, redirect their mail exchanger (MX) record, and configure the service for the monitoring features and report options they might need.

When you are sent an email, its passage of travel is from your email program to your outbound email server. Your outbound email server contacts the DNS server to inquire where the email should go. The DNS server replies with an MX record, which is the address of the inbound email server for the recipient. Your outbound email server shares the email to the recipient´s inbound email server, from where he or she picks it up the next time they access their email account.

When you set up a cloud spam filter MX, it changes the address of the MX record from your inbound email server to the inbound email server of your filtering service supplier. Your filtering service provider then inspects each email for spam and malware, before forwarding spam-free and malware-free emails onto your inbound email server – not only assisting you to eliminate spam and enhance your online security, but reducing the load on your email server.

The cloud-based filtering service uses a series of multilayered mechanisms to discover spam and email-borne threats. These usually include comparing inbound emails against blacklists of known spammers and their IP addresses, identifying efforts to mask spam as genuine email, and Greylisting – where the cloud-based spam filter for mail exchangers requests for each email to be resent.

Greylisting is a very important feature to have in a cloud spam filter MX. Hackers’ servers are too busy sending out spam emails to respond to the request for an email to be resent. Due to this, the request is denied and the email is classified as spam. As Greylisting identifies new sources of spam before they are placed on a global blacklist, a cloud spam filter MX with Greylisting catches more spam than comparable products lacking this feature (such as Microsoft Exchange Online Protection).

A cloud-based spam filter for mail exchangers carries out two other important functions along with eliminating spam emails. The first is providing antivirus security. Although most groups will have antivirus software installed to safeguard their networks from adware, spyware and botnets; a cloud spam filter MX adds extra levels of online security through phishing protection and malicious URL blocking – quarantining any email suspected of linking to a malicious website.

The second additional function it completes is outbound email scanning. This ensures that your group does not send out emails containing malware – or links bringing the recipient to a malicious website – or anything that could be thought of by another cloud spam filter MX as being spam. This function ensures that your group’s IP address does not appear on a global blacklist, with the consequence that the delivery of your group’s emails would be delayed.