Omniquad Mailwall Remote
Knowledgebase and FAQs
- How is Mailwall Remote better than an in house software solution?
- How do I check the mails being rejected/quarantined?
- Can I customize the service the serve my business needs?
- How much time does it take to start filtering my e-mails using Mailwall Remote?
- How much time does it take to scan and deliver the message?
- Does Mailwall Remote scan outgoing mail?
- How much does Mailwall Remote cost me?
- How much notification would there be for any system downtime?
- Are there any independently verified Spam detection rates (percentage) that can be referred to?
- Any Independently verified false/positive detection rates (percentage)?
- How is the virus scanning different / better from the one I use on my network?
- How long are my e-mails stored for in event of my SMTP server being unavailable?
- Does the product include an audit log?
- How much control does the service grant to the Administrator with respect to custom rules? Does it take effect immediately?
- Does Mailwall Remote use whitelisting and blacklisting of users / domains / IP addresses?
- How long does the service store the quarantined messages?
- How long does Mailwall Remote keep the messages on its servers after the mail has been sent?
- Can I retrieve my mails after some specified time?
Q. How is Mailwall Remote better than an in house software solution?
A. Mailwall Remote is a completely managed service. You will not need any expensive software or hardware and cost of maintenance. Mailwall Remote drastically reduces the work load of managing the e-mail filtering solutions. All the e-mails will be scanned for viruses and Spam on our servers and delivered to you without any kind of effort being taken from your end. All the quarantined mails reside on our servers, saving you 60-70% of bandwidth.
Q. How do I check the mails being rejected/quarantined?
A. Omniquad provides you with web access http://myaccount.mailwallremote.com to the admin account for Mailwall Remote. Here you can view the mails which are blocked as Spam and/or virus mails under the "quarantine" folder. Also, the "reports" section provides you with complete stats of e-mail filtering.
Q. Can I customize the service the serve my business needs?
A. Yes, the service is highly customizable. Rules can be created to fit your e-mail policy, down to the individual e-mail address level. This means, you can even specify who is allowed what kind of e-mail attachments. Also, you can add new domains and users as and when you have them on.
Q. How much time does it take to start filtering my e-mails using Mailwall Remote?
A. You just need to change the MX records to ones provided by us. Click here for a no obligation free trial of Mailwall remote.
Q. How much time does it take to scan and deliver the message?
A. It usually takes around 3 to 4 seconds to process an e-mail without attachment.
Q. Does Mailwall Remote scan outgoing mail?
A. Yes, Mailwall Remote also scans the outgoing mails your users are sending to their contacts. This feature is optional.
Q. How much does Mailwall Remote cost me?
A. The cost would depend on what all features you opt for. Mailwall Remote is a modular service and you will pay only for what you are using and suits your business needs.
Q. How much notification would there be for any system downtime?
A. Our business model and one of the major selling points are based on no downtime during any maintenance period. This is achieved by running the service from 6 data centres, redundant design and replicating the data across several locations in real time. The operational resiliency is also guaranteed by the SLA.
In event of any disruption of delivery for any unexpected reason, a real-time alert is automatically sent to the customer (such as an SMS alert). For example, the service can automatically alert the customer if there's a possibility of mail delay longer than 10 minutes, even if no such delay will take place.
The current service status can be checked at any time in the service status window.
The customer is also provided with a service monitor tool allowing them to check the performance status of any of the 30 servers.
The customer is also provided with a service monitor tool allowing them to check the performance status of any of the 30 servers.
Additionally, at the end of each month, a performance audit is submitted to the customer so that they can see that the SLA has been met with respect to delivery times.
Q. Are there any independently verified Spam detection rates (percentage) that can be referred to?
A. An independently verified Spam detection rate may perhaps represent percentage on a specific domain at a specific point in time, but is not really accurate to be of any real value to real customers or potential customers choosing a service provider.
This is because Spammers' tactics evolve continuously: a good service has to provide satisfactory zero-hour Spam or malware protection at all times. Additionally, from a managed services provider point of view, we can easily demonstrate that a level of Spam varies greatly between domains to the point of any such Spam detection to be irrelevant.
Typically, our Spam capture ratio varies between 98.5% and 99.5%. The absolute minimum guaranteed by the SLA itself is 99%.
We are happy to revise that in the SLA for a particular customer after a trial period, but not before. This way the customer can be assured that the performance of the service will never degrade beyond the trial period.
We feel that inclusion of Spam filtering performance in the SLA is far more preferable than taking the service up because of a claim that may not be relevant.
Q. Any Independently verified false/positive detection rates (percentage)?
A. There's no independent verification for reasons similar to these outlined in Spam capture rates.
They can be included in the SLA however after a trial period (guaranteeing that the service performance in terms of false positives will not get lower than the one demonstrated during the trial)
Again, we feel that an actual SLA guarantee is considerably more valuable than an "independently verfied false/positive detection rates."
Supplemental information:
The service implements 2 additional measures to avoid false positives.
The one, allows for automatic addition of outbound addresses to customer's white list (as long we the outgoing messages are real messages and not "out of office replies," e-mail read receipts, bounces etc. This has been a proven mechanism running for long time delivering high quality results. This white list can be automatically maintained by the system on the domain level, or even per user level (for all or selected users). If maintained by the user level, the white list can be user specific and the end user can edit it themselves.
The second mechanism available can add a domain and its IP address automatically to customer white list as soon as the system detects a thread of correspondence between the customer or the other domain.
While we believe that the false positive rate will be satisfactory from day one, both of these mechanisms make the system smarter in terms of avoiding false positives the longer it is used.
Q. How is the virus scanning different / better from the one I use on my network?
A. There are 4 different engines in use at the moment: Authentium (Command), Quick Heal, Clam and Omniquad Intercept. Negotiations are currently under way with Kaspersky to use as the 5th one.
The service virus guarantee is 100% in the SLA.
Q. How long are my e-mails stored for in event of my SMTP server being unavailable?
A. While this can be increased on customer demand, we recommend that it is 7 days. This is because according to the Internet standards, the sender can reasonably expect that they will receive a notification that a message is still not delivered, and after some time, if the message has still not been delivered, it should be retuned.
We recommend that if the customer considers the E-mail Contingency and Recovery service which provides all contingencies in event of customer's mail server downtime.
Q. Does the product include an audit log?
A. Yes the service provides audit logs for message delivery performance, quarantine, web interface access, web policy changes, messages viewed or released from quarantine.
Q. How much control does the service grant to the Administrator with respect to custom rules? Does it take effect immediately?
A. The Administrator has complete control on the service. The flexibility of the service allows the users to set policies and rule for almost all aspects and can be done for as acute as going down to single user. Normally they take effect within 30 minutes while they are distributed to all the servers running the service. If the customer requires an instant activation of new rules, they have to make a request on via the support interface.
Q. Does Mailwall Remote use whitelisting and blacklisting of users / domains / IP addresses?
A. Yes.
Q. How long does the service store the quarantined messages?
A. By default we store the mails for 7 days. We can increase this period to up to 30 days on customer request.
Q. How long does Mailwall Remote keep the messages on its servers after the mail has been sent?
A. Unless we receive different instructions, they will be normally stored for 7 days.
This is to allow for:
- message queries
- resending of accidentally deleted messages
- incident investigations
We can retain them for shorter period upon request.
Q. Can I retrieve my mails after some specified time?
A. Yes, E-mail Contingency and recovery service caters to this requirement of yours. We will save all you e-mails on our servers and will give you the data whenever you need it burnt on a CD.
SLA Promises
- Stops 100% virus
- Stops 95% Spam
- 99.9% uptime
Screen Shots
"E-Mail Management was a time consuming task with scanning for Viruses and SPAM clogging up our Network. Using Mailwall Remote we have been successful in stopping 100% of Viruses and over 95% of SPAM coming into the Network, as a result my time is no longer spent continually fire-fighting Mail issues."
— Barry Howieson, Scottish Ambulance Service 3500 Mailbox Users (Largest Ambulance Service in UK) Using Mailwall Remote for three years.