Groupware Protection

First line of defense for Exchange™, Notes™, and Groupwise™ servers.

The IronPort C-Series is a protective shield between the Internet and your groupware servers (Microsoft Exchange™, Lotus Notes™, or Novell Groupwise™). SMTP threats are not defended by today's firewalls, causing businesses to deploy resource-intensive security measures on their groupware servers. This approach to protect email systems is not optimal because the protective measures are running on top of the mission-critical applications, competing for system resources.

The IronPort C-Series is an integrated, purpose-built email security solution that scans all incoming and outgoing email at the network perimeter to block malicious content before it enters your network. This reduces the load on groupware servers, enabling them to perform tasks more efficiently.

Ensure High Availability of Email

Email worms and spam attacks have highlighted a nasty vulnerability about using general purpose systems to handle inbound SMTP communications. These systems are limited by the number (typically in hundreds) of concurrent SMTP connections. Once that number of connections is exhausted, your company gives a "busy signal" to the Internet.

The IronPort C-Series has been architected from the ground up to handle the massive connection needs of today's email environments and increasingly sophisticated threats. By handling up to 10,000 concurrent connections, IronPort's AsyncOS™ ensures the availability of your email systems up to one hundred times over traditional systems.

Never Lose an Email

IronPort AsyncOS is designed to withstand the burden of large mail queues. There are times when groupware servers are unavailable because of planned maintenance or unexpected downtime. The IronPort C-Series can store up to one week of email during those downtimes.

IronPort AsyncOS can throttle the rate of mail delivery to your groupware servers. This ensures that your groupware servers are never overwhelmed by sudden message or connection spikes. The IronPort C-Series acts as a "shock absorber" to keep your email protected, even when your groupware systems are busy.

Reduce Groupware Costs

It is expensive to add capacity to email systems to handle the growing communication needs of your business. Most companies add more servers to handle the new demand. However, valuable system resources that are being spent scanning mail can be relieved by placing an IronPort C-Series at the perimeter and keeping unwanted traffic off of these systems.

In July of 2003, the percentage of spam on the Internet crossed the threshold of 50%. As employee's inboxes balloon from the sharp increase in unwanted email, administrators are enforcing conservative retention policies that irritate end users. The alternative has been to add expensive storage to these systems. The IronPort C-Series eliminates spam at the perimeter of the network, keeping end user's inbox size down and both end users and administrators happy.

Block Threats at the Perimeter

Let's face it, the most malicious email attacks that have occurred over the past several years have been targeted at systems running Windows™. The best way to protect your email from threats is by stopping them before they get to the systems they were written to exploit. IronPort AsyncOS is a hardened operating system—locked down to ensure that hackers can't take advantage of your network.