How it Works

Brief Summary

MX Resources filtering service works by intercepting junk mail and spam before it is delivered to your email server.  By pointing your "mx records" to our service, we can eliminate over 90% of your unwanted messages.  Our quarantine website lets you access anything our servers filtered, with easy access to white lists and settings.

Diagram

Before we can demonstrate how MX Resources and Postini filtering works, you must have a basic understanding of how email works. 

In the diagram above, email is coming from three different servers across the internet.  1) Most are junk mail or viruses and come from overseas or computers that have been taken over by other viruses.  2) Some are legitimate messages being sent by your vendors or clients.  3) All of these messages enter your company's email server -- at your location or through an email service provider.  4) Finally, your computer downloads the mail waiting for it on the server.

With MX Resources email filtering service, the process is slightly different as demonstrated here:

You'll notice that before anything is delivered to your mail server (in step 3) it must first pass through the MX Resources filtering service.  By directing your mail to us first, our service filters out the junk and delivers the rest to your existing mail service.  Your server only receives legitimate email, and thus your users only get what they want.

In-Depth Description

When an email is sent from one computer to another, it passes through a number of servers in between.  The whole process is like sending a letter through the US Post Office -- the envelope probably visits at least three offices before being delivered to your recipient.

At the heart of the email delivery system is a line of data called an "mx record".  The mx record for your company's domain name tells mail servers where to deliver your email.  This record is usually some kind of name like "mail.yourcompany.com" or an address like "192.168.1.2".

With MX Resources mail filtering service, your mx record is set to point to our servers instead.  We then remove all the unwanted messages and viruses, putting them in a special quarantine that your users can access via our website.  All other (legitimate) messages are passed on to your original mx record, going straight to your mail server for you to download.

The end-result is that you get only the emails you want to get, without wasting precious bandwidth and server space on junk.

Quarantine Interface and Demonstration

Postini has won numerous awards on its user-friendliness and per-user customizable settings.  All of this is accessed through the quarantine interface where users can see what messages were filtered by the system and view them.  Further, they can create white lists, black lists, change the "aggressiveness" of the filter, and more.  View larger examples of the quarantine interface, or log on to our demonstration account.

White Papers

Learn more about Postini through downloadable White Papers.

FAQs

Looking for more technical information?  Visit our FAQs.

How to Get Started

Getting started couldn't be easier!  We have a three-step process that we walk you through, and it all starts with our online request form.