Tech Overview for Site Administrators

MailWash acts as a "proxy" filter for an unprotected mail server you currently have setup at your site.

Click here for a pictorial overview of the filtering schema.

We simply reconfigure your domain MX records to point to the MailWash server which cleans your email and forwards legitimate messages to the mail server at your site.

When desired, the local site administrator connects to our secure web based message store to check the status of email directed to your site.

From the web based message store, the administrator can check quarantined messages, release them if necessary, create white and black lists and train the SPAM detection engines to be more / less aggressive with email.

Our Anti-Virus engines are configured in a staggered update arrangement that equate to update intervals of 10 minutes. This update policy coupled with our default attachment filter set makes the possibility of an infected message making it through our defences extremely remote. We use ClamAV, BitDefender and F-PROT scanning engines on incoming email. To date MailWash has not passed a single Virus infected message onto local mailboxes or remote mail servers despite latency in infeced email propogation and Vendor released AV signatures.

Our MX servers perform spam checks against SBL+XBL NJABL ORDB-RBL spamcop.net korea.services.net as DNSRBL providers however we do not reject email at the MTA level. This means that mail passes our MTA's and is then checked against these blackist providers. If a message is found containing a blacklisted IP address then it is put in quarantine where you can then choose to release or delete.

As a secondary level of Spam defense, messages are then passed through Spamassassin where body / subject / pattern matching and bayesian analysis are performed. You as an administrator have the ability to set the upper and lower threshold of Spamasssasin to tune it to your messaging needs or turn spam scanning off should you desire.

Our Grey Listing implementation can be configured to perform pseudo LDAP call ahead to your mail server to check whether an intended recipient actually exists before the message is passed on. This prevents dictionary harvest attacks from Spammers attempting to retrieve valid usernames from your mail server. Grey listing can also be turned off for known senders and domains. All legitimate grey listed senders are cached for 4 weeks to prevent message delays past the first point of contact.

QoS policies run our front end MX servers to ensure seamless data flow even in times of peak I/O.

Our server cluster runs fault tolerant disk arrays and perform automated off site back up at hourly intervals (Core system data - not email stores). All servers run Red-Hat Linux with MySQL back ends.

Service monitors perform frequent status checking with remote status reports sent to network administrators hourly. Web access to the MailWash web based message store including username / password negotiation is encrypted using a 128bit Cipher SSL layer.

Load Balanced custom MX records for your domain name are created with each MailWash subscription to evenly disperse incoming mail across our primary filter servers to ensure seamless incoming mail delivery.

if you have additional technical questions, please use the contact form to submit your query. A member of our technical support staff will respond with an answer promptly.

MailWash protects your email system from unwanted malware, Spam and Phishing attempts. We consistently monitor industry trends to make sure we stay ahead of the latest email malware campaigns and rapidly implement changes in protection before the threat hits.

All future technical improvements integrated into the MailWash content filtering system will be passed on  without charge to our current client base.