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SERVICES
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Email Filtering > Anti-Virus
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Back in 1998, 0% of virus attacks were reported as email-based. By the year 2000 the figure had risen to 65.5%, and now in 2002 almost 100% of virus attacks are email-based.* The Internet has removed the barriers and increased the speed of communication, but has inadvertently provided an ideal platform for the spread of computer viruses.
While the Network-Box system combines many extremely powerful tools to protect email, the fully automatic POP3 and IMAP4 email protection functions, are of particular note.
For example, if someone arrived in an office protected by a Network-Box, and he or she had a laptop computer setup to download email from either a POP3 or IMAP4 account, they would be fully protected by the Network-Box as soon as they plugged their computer into the LAN. That is it - no setup required. Messages passing through the Network Box are transparently intercepted and scanned, before being passed on to their original destination. No workstation or server reconfiguration is necessary. Most systems cannot offer this type of protection at all, require additional setup, or require additional software to be purchased and installed. In a company with 50 computers, each with SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4 email systems setup on individual email client software, setup would take quite some time and effort to achieve, even if no additional costs were involved. In the case of the Network-Box, the 50 computers would be protected as soon as the system was installed - with no additional effort.
Automatic POP3 and IMAP4 email protection, also allows sites which do not host their own email systems, to be protected by the Network-Box. The outsourcing of email management is common, yet many traditional anti-virus email gateways can not work with such a configuration, as they only support the SMTP protocol directly.
An important feature of the anti virus and policy enforcement of the Network Box is the ability to block script, iFrame and binary code embedded into an email, even if hidden. It was common practice for a while to send out free newsletters which contained script. These apparently free newsletters often contained marketing spy-ware aimed at obtaining data that the sender could sell to pay for the newsletter itself. Though this practice has now greatly decreased, the use of code to distribute threats has actually increased and has gone from marketing spy-ware to true malware. We see often that emails that appear to be spam, in reality contain scripts. You must wonder why a spammer would send executable code in an email. The reason is simple: once on your computer, this code will activate and download the actual threat. A script may not contain a threat per se?, but it may download a threat on your workstation once activated.
The general rule adopted by Network Box is that there is truly never a reason why someone should send you active code in an email, unless you are fully aware of it and ready to accept it.
It is Network Box recommendation that policies be configured, and enforced, on the Network Box gateway to block emails containing such code. This policy should be set by default, and disabled on a per-sender basis (if required).
The configuration of, and policies enforced by, the Network Box are set and controlled by the client. The above is our recommendation for such policies, which are configurable on a box-by-box basis.
As part of its quality assurance procedures, the Network-Box Corporation will only release a new batch of anti-virus signatures after they have been fully tested, and proven to be effective against known infected files.
While it is not possible for any anti-virus system to be one hundred percent effective against all possible computer viruses, the Network-Box offers as high a level of protection as it is perhaps reasonable to expect in the real world.
Learn how the Network Box Anti-Virus feature works - Download whitepaper.
* Statistics from "Computer Virus Incidents reports 2000".
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In a company with 50 computers, each with (for example) POP3 email system setup on individual email client software, setup would take time and effort to achieve, even without any additional cost. In the case of the Network Box solution, the 50 computers would be protected as soon as the system is installed - with no additional effort.
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