A public Internet mail server, its users, and their email messages are a prime targets for abuse and penetration. One must assume that every email system will be attacked sooner or later. If no defensive measures are in place, the email server will be crippled or destroyed or hijacked, the user accounts and passwords discovered, user workstations damaged or destroyed by email viruses, and the contents of the email messages read by the attackers.

MEI offers several e-mail security solutions that provide secure, reliable, and clean email for any business. The MEI e-mail security solutions are available as services for the client's mail routed through MEI's facilities or as products installed on the client's premises.

The business losses posed by mail-borne viruses and worms, such as famous ILOVEYOU and KAK, are well known. The estimate for world-wide losses due to the ILOVEYOU virus in 2000 was several billion dollars. Email attacks are best detected and stopped before they are delivered to workstations. MEI VirusGate is a complete anti-virus mail server solution that is available as a service by routing mail through MEI's VirusGate server or as a product installed on the client's premises.




SPAM or UCE ("unsolicited commercial email") is a constantly increasing nuisance to users. As the volume of SPAM increases, the level of service provided by a mail server also degrades. MEI's recent experience in providing defensive mail systems and services indicates that MEI SpamGate can reduce spam by 90% (90 SPAM messages blocked out 100 received. The SPAM messages are rejected before they can enter the customer's mail server, reducing the work of the mail server. The mail users notice a dramatic reduction in the amount SPAM in their in-boxes.




A Mail Bomb is a malicious attack intended to overwhelm the targeted a mail server so that normal mail service is slowed to halt, denying mail services to the users. 1000's of messages per hour are sent at high speed to known or unknown users. When the mail bomb is sent to a known user, the user's mailbox and mail server's disk is filled, blocking further operation until the junk messages are deleted. When the mail bomb is sent to an unknown user, the mail server is heavily occupied rejecting the messages at high speed, slowing the operation of the mail server. Mail bomb attacks often last for hours. There is no way to stop a mail bomb. MEI SpamGate protects a client's mail server by automatically detecting and absorbing the mail bomb attack so that the client's mail server is unaffected.




Address Harvesting is a similar to mail bombing in behavior and effect on the targeted mail server, but it has a different objective: to harvest the names of valid users on a mail server. Using a dictionary of common user names and the valid domain names on a mail server, an address harvesting program will send 1000's of messages at high speed to different addresses. By recording which addresses are accepted by the attacked mail server, the address harvesting program learns the mail account names of valid users. The validated mail addresses are then added to the spammer's list and often sold on CD ROM's containing millions of email addresses to be used by spammers around the world. Since most of the dictionary of names will be rejected, the effect on the harvested mail server is similar to that of a mail bomb: the mail server is heavily occupied rejecting mail to unknown users.




"Open relay" means that a mail server will accept mail from any sender and deliver, "relay", the mail to any recipient. A closed relay is a mail server that accepts only mail addressed to known local users and rejects all messages addressed to other mail servers. When an open relay is highjacked by a spammer, the open relay mail server facilitates the abuse of Internet mail and allows the spammer to obscure the real source of the spamming. When protected by SpamGate, a client's mail server is not present in Internet DNS mail records.




Another mail attack is not against an email server but against the privacy of email messages. It should be noted that "Internet email is as secure as a postcard". This dramatizes the fact that email messages are sent through Internet as clear text. By choice or by error, an email message arriving in the wrong hands is readable by anyone. For business communications, this situation is unacceptable, so MEI offers Email VPN so that two mail servers can exchange mail that is encrypted and secured against unauthorized readers.


MEI Mail Security Solutions

MEI has developed a range of product that provide email security and reliability, addressing each of the problems and risks described above. MEI SpamGate, VirusGate, and Email VPN, singly or together, provide the best available approaches for securing an organization's email operations.