Reduce spam email

Secure intellectual property

Reduce exposure to legal liability

Enhance defenses against viruses

Praetor is a tool to help Microsoft Exchange sites fight and reduce a growing Internet messaging problem – objectionable and destructive email. This includes unsolicited commercial advertisements (spam), virus-infected attachments, offensive content, and confidential company information.

Praetor exceeds the security capabilities found in Microsoft Exchange Server and augments any existing anti-virus software. The supplied Praetor rules can detect techniques used by spammers beyond simple word and phrase analysis. By examining the message content -- all of the headers and body -- Praetor notes the presence and absence of key information. 

Praetor also lets administrators easily manage and create rules specific to a company’s own experiences. Its rule wizard has an interface similar to the one found in Outlook and lets you define the message direction, conditions, actions and exceptions for any rule. In a few short steps, new filtering conditions can be made to address the specific needs of your site:

• Scan for leaks of proprietary information 

• Detect profanity or unacceptable language

• Add disclaimers

• Create automatic replies 

• Archive messages

• Send notices for specific criteria 

Praetor is installed with more than 20 default rules, most provided to control spam. CMS developed these rules after studying and profiling of thousands of spam messages. 

Some rules concern messages containing attachments. Those attachments matching certain filename and extension patterns are quarantined, while known viruses are deleted. Since Praetor’s introduction in 1999, these rules have been totally effective in stopping viruses before they pass to the local users.

Praetor’s rules are periodically updated to combat the latest spamming techniques. Recently spammers have targeted Exchange Servers, taking advantage of their capability to return non-delivery reports. This spam attack causes Exchange to act as an indirect mail relay, an attack that Praetor will successfully prevent.

Praetor installs as a native Windows service, on either the same Exchange server or a separate Windows NT/2000 workstation. 

Praetor offers another layer of protection for the entire Exchange user population. Its ease and flexibility in creating rules, determined by local experiences, lets Praetor be fine tuned to a company’s specific message filtering needs.

Message Transport Level Tests

• Validates sending mail host during initial mail session start-up based upon the IP address

• Validates message sender

• Validates intended recipient to prevent unauthorized mail relaying

• Queries multiple DNS blackhole lists (ex. MAPS RBL) of known spam IP addresses

Message Header Level Tests

• Quarantines suspicious attachments

• Defends against indirect relay attack

• Detects common spam email techniques

• Allows messages from subscribed listservers

• Deletes email to former employees

• Pre-defined filter templates using subject or body keyword lists for pornography, explicit language, confidential data, etc.

Administration Features

• Log viewer with remote capability to examine and act on quarantined messages: accept, reject, re-direct or return the message to sender

• Log analysis is provided through an Access database application with full source code, and generates reports showing various messaging statistics

• Rule wizard permits construction of administrator-defined custom filters

• Filter rules are in understandable English

• Tool to import/export Praetor lists

Message Management Options

Praetor conditional rules must contain one of these required actions to process the email:

• Accept

• Reject

• Quarantine

• Redirect

Optional message actions include:

• Append/Prepend disclaimers to a message

• Return to sender

• Send notification to sender

• Send notification to Administrator

• Send notification to any email address

• Forward message 

• Add message header field(s) to pass hints to client-side filters

Global Rules

Praetor always performs “Global Rules” that have no conditions, but depend upon the message direction. Use these rules to:

• Archive all inbound and outbound message traffic

• Add different disclaimers to inbound or outbound messages

Requirements

• Windows NT v4 SP6 Server or Workstation; Windows 2000 Professional or Server

• Exchange Server v5.5 or 2000

• Internet Mail or Exchange SMTP service

• Microsoft Access 2000 or 2002