With the ever-increasing popularity of the Internet and electronic messaging systems, there has been an increase in the need for e-mail security systems too. Whether you are a small organisation or have thousands of employees and have an e-mail server for your domain, you always need to spend a lot on fighting spam and viruses. SAFENTRIX provides a hosted and free e-mail security solution that keeps spam, virus and malware off your network, while ensuring that genuine e-mails always get through. SAFENTRIX achieves its goal by using a combination of popular open source tools, other than the anti-spam database.
SAFENTRIX, while claiming 100 per cent virus protection and over 99 per cent spam protection, can save up to 40 per cent of your e-mail bandwidth costs. And it’s available in two flavours. The standard service is absolutely free, for any number of users, with no compromise on e-mail security. The premium service offers additional peace of mind through compliance with industry standards (HIPAA, GLB) and a 100 per cent service level agreement warranty.
SAFENTRIX uses seven different layers of spam protection to give you a spam and virus-free inbox. It uses IP checks, HELO checks, selective grey-listing, sender address/domain validation, recipient address/domain validation, in-house proprietary blacklist checks, content checks to achieve efficiency. It can support up to 20,000 users per domain and also supports the same number of users for a sub-domain.
Easy to set up
Setting up the solution is very simple and does not require too much of technical expertise. It can be configured by anyone who has some knowledge of DNS, MX and A records. Neither does it require any changes in your current infrastructure and integrates seamlessly with the existing system. Also, it is compatible with all modern e-mail servers, including (but not limited to):
- Microsoft Exchange Server
- Lotus Notes
- Qmail
- Postfix
- Sendmail
Apart from this, it supports all hosted e-mail services like Yahoo!, Gmail and others that provide POP/IMAP services.
SAFENTRIX can be installed and configured in three simple steps:
- Register and create accounts using an automated process at safentrix.com.
- Add domains, corresponding delivery records and user names.
- Change MX records for domains.
The configuration is simple, yet has live chat support that can be accessed even if you are configuring it as a free service.
Security and reliability
SAFENTRIX has secured communications with its high grade encryption (AES 256 bit) CAPTCHA check at every step: it thwarts automated attacks; sends e-mail notifications on password attacks; and ensures account access is tied to the IP address for additional protection, besides other multiple layers of security. These include host-based firewalls, application security layer and strong encryption that protect e-mails while in transit.
Having the system always up is achieved through multiple redundant e-mail servers that ensure your e-mails are always received and delivered. SAFENTRIX uses cloud computing to ensure that server problems can be overridden in 10 minutes or less. The system always sends a bounce message when it rejects an e-mail (even if it contains a virus). This allows senders to take corrective action as and when required and resend the e-mail. It can store your e-mails for up to six hours in case the e-mail server MX is down. Over all, the use of SAFENTRIX can be considered secure and reliable.
A mock set-up
We tried SAFENTRIX on one of our domains. It took us around 15 minutes to configure the entire system. The configuration is really simple and instructions on the screen are easy enough to understand. Though it provides live chat support to configure your domain, we do not think that would be required, at least during the initial configuration. Our test domain has 50 users that used to get around 125 spams per user per day after deactivating our existing anti-spam solution. When we checked up with all the users a day after implementing the free solution of SAFENTRIX, the response showed a maximum of one or two spams per e-mail account. We also tried to send an e-mail with a virus infected file attached but the system rejected the mail. We felt it passed all the tests.
Where is the ‘Spam’ folder?
Yes, this is what sets SAFENTRIX apart from other e-mail security software. There is no spam/quarantine folder to keep a constant watch on. This is the result of the product team’s efforts to reduce the responsibilities of the systems administrator. The idea is that every time an e-mail gets blocked by the software, the senders get a bounce-back e-mail informing them about the rejection, along with a unique white-list key that can later be used to white-list that particular sender’s e-mail ID.
Our verdict
There aren’t many e-mail security solutions around that provide such efficient spam and virus filtering, along with live chat with the support team, for absolutely no cost. The only downside seems to be that every time someone sends you an e-mail, two lines of their text advertisement get appended at the end of the e-mail, which one always has the option to delete, while replying back, in case one isn’t too keen to ‘spread the love’.
However, not everybody might be comfortable with the idea of not having a spam folder to check up if any genuine e-mails got mistakenly trashed. But then, everyone had wanted to kill Google too, when it introduced labels and did away with folders.
So, all in all, SAFENTRIX actually looks like a useful product to get your hands on. How it will manage to start earning the moolah despite dishing out so many freebies is what remains to be seen.
