Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering Using multi-engine spam and virus scanning technologies, Hosted Filtering provides active content, connection and policy based email filtering. If e-mail servers are down then e-mail is automatically queued until the failed servers return online.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Continuity Hosted Continuity provides accessible e-mail during and after network outages. It provides a rolling 30 day message store with easy search and retrieval capabilities.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Encryption Hosted Encryption provides policy-based encryption from senders to recipients.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Archive Hosted Archive provides long term e-mail storage and retention, which helps to satisfy industry and regulatory email retention requirements. Only emails that have passed through email Hosted Filtering are archived. This service acts as a fully functional backup to your e-mail system and includes rapid search and retrieval. Hosted Archive includes Hosted Continuity.

Features and Benefits

• Provides multiple real-time anti-spam and anti-virus defenses.
• Helps eliminate threats before they reach the corporate firewall.
• Provides backup e-mail systems for rapid disaster recovery.
• Helps satisfy external requirements for e-mail retention and monitoring.
• Assists with internal policy enforcement.
• Respond quickly to e-discovery requests.
• Helps eliminate up-front capital investment.
• Helps free up administrator time to focus on other projects.

The Network Advantage

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services are powered by a global network of data centers based on a fault-tolerant and redundant architecture and are load balanced both site to site and internally within each data center. If any one data center is unavailable, traffic is automatically routed to another data center, minimizing the chances of interruption to the service. Multiple e-mail servers in each data center accept e-mail on the customers’ behalf, providing a layer of separation between their servers and the Internet.

Furthermore, Microsoft algorithms analyze and route message traffic between data centers to help ensure timely and efficient delivery. With this highly available network, Microsoft provides service level guarantees of 99.999% uptime. This approach, built upon a distributed server and software model, has proven successful in helping customers protect fragile corporate networks and e-mail servers from common threats, such as dangerous worms, denial-of-service assaults, directory harvest and dictionary attacks, and other forms of e-mail abuse.

All messages processed by Exchange Hosted Services are encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS). The service will attempt to send any message using TLS but will automatically roll over to Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) if the destination e-mail server is not configured to use TLS. This helps ensure privacy of all e-mail while in the Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering environment and to other organizations with TLS-enabled e-mail servers.

Rapid Deployment and Simplified Messaging Management

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services offer extraordinary ease of implementation. There is no need for enterprises to change or modify their existing e-mail infrastructure or to install and maintain any new hardware or software. With a simple configuration change to their Domain Name System (DNS), customers can begin using Microsoft Exchange services right away. There is no hardware to provision; no software to buy, install, or configure; and no expensive training required for IT staff or the end users.

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services require only one MX record, which resolves to the Exchange Hosted Services network, allowing the IP address of the corporate e-mail server to remain hidden from DNS lookups. This helps customers become invisible to malicious mailers because the DNS lookup points at the Microsoft network instead of their own network. Customers only accept inbound SMTP traffic from Microsoft, therefore closing a vulnerability in their network firewall. An additional connection restriction locks down firewalls and allows e-mail servers to respond only to inbound SMTP requests on port 25 from the Microsoft network. This restriction helps prevent unwanted e-mail from being sent through a back door directly to the server’s IP address.