EasyStreet Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus Frequently Asked Questions

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How big of a problem is spam?

According to IDC and Forbes, the average employee wastes 10 minutes per day dealing with spam. We've been much more conservative in our example. Wasting just one minute a day, per employee in a 50-person organization where the average wage is $15 an hour, costs a company $250 per month.

Unsolicited email creates its own issues:

• Increased strain on the network and IT resources. Spam consumes labor resources, slows network traffic and clogs gigabytes of storage space.
• Decreased productivity and lost revenue. The process of managing email has become more cumbersome and time consuming due to spam, taking employees away from primary business activities and making it easy to miss important messages. In many companies, this can equate to lost revenue.
• Exposure to legal liabilities. Spam containing offensive content, such as pornography, that comes in to a company through the email system, can create a hostile work environment resulting in employee lawsuits — particularly if a company has not implemented an anti-spam solution.

How does the anti-spam/anti-virus service work?

EasyStreet's anti-spam/anti-virus service is powered by Postini®. Using patent-pending pass-through technology—versus store-and-forward methods—email bound for a company's email server is processed in real-time through a highly secure architecture. Within milliseconds, the email security solution separates spam and viruses from legitimate messages. Legitimate email is instantly passed on to the destination mail server. Suspicious email can either be quarantined in a web-based, password-protected message center for administrator or end-user review or tagged and delivered. The entire process is fully automated and virtual. Valid emails are not stored or written to disk, nor are they physically accessed by any persons other than the recipient or authorized administrator.

What controls do end users have?

Spam filters, shown below, enable users to select the sensitivity of different categories of offensive email. Users can also block or approve specific senders or domains by entering addresses manually.

What happens to quarantined messages?

Users receive periodic notices of quarantined mail held in their message centers. They can review the quarantined messages or take no action. Quarantined messages are automatically deleted after 14 days. The filters "remember and learn" from interaction and become more accurate with time.

What kind of administrative privileges are available?

EasyStreet Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus offers unique administrative capabilities to give you control and flexibility. Choose from Standard, Plus, Pro and Perimeter Manager administrative privileges.

• Standard: Choose standard service if you don't have a mail administrator and want the simplest solution.
• Plus: If you have a mail administrator, more than one domain and want global administrator controls, the Plus solution is recommended.
• Pro: For companies that manage a large number of mailboxes, want to apply rules by groups and have more than three domains.
• Perimeter Manager: For companies with a large number of mailboxes that want to manage both inbound and outbound messages, and want to encrypt messages.

What does it cost?

EasyStreet's Anti-spam/Anti-Virus Service is cost effective.

• Standard: $2.50 a month per mailbox, five mailbox minimum, includes one domain, $49 setup.
• Plus: $2.50 per mailbox and $25 admin per month, includes three domains at time of setup, $199 setup ($10 per additional domain).
• Pro: $2.50 per mailbox and $100 admin per month, $249 setup
• Perimeter Manager: $2.75 per mailbox and $150 admin per month, $299 setup. Perimeter Manager service requires a one-year agreement.

What are the system requirements for EasyStreet's solution?

EasyStreet's Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus service is available for customers running their own mail server or have Hosted Exchange where EasyStreet provides DNS services. The service works independent of your mail server, so will work with any email software.

How is it implemented?

Deployment occurs in less than a week.

• Within two business days of placing an order for the Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus service, your mail administrator will receive an introduction email and administrative account login information.
• Your mail administrator schedules a 30-minute phone walk-through training with EasyStreet Support. We cover all aspects of the administrative Web interface.
• The mail administrator creates EasyStreet/Postini accounts via the administrative Web interface.
• Once the desired accounts are created, the mail administrator notifies EasyStreet. We repoint the domain's MX record in DNS. Filtering starts immediately. It will take 24 hours for DNS caching entries to expire and full filtering to occur.

You have control over which mailboxes at your organization use this Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus service. Many customers beta test a handful of mailboxes before adding additional mailboxes.