Increased anti-spam efficacy - Traditional solutions have hovered around a 95 percent catch rate with a very high false-positive rate. Cisco’s IronPort technology consistently delivers a more than 99 percent catch rate and balances this with a rate of less than one false positive per million messages.

Service Uptime and Prevention of Data Contamination - Many vendors base their solutions on a shared infrastructure, which helps reduce costs at the risk of the “shared fate” phenomenon where one customer’s mail environment problem can ripple through other customers sharing that same infrastructure. With Cisco IronPort Hosted E-mail Security, every customer enjoys a dedicated, geographically diverse infrastructure that is not shared.

Advanced Controls - Traditional hosted e-mail security vendors provide very rudimentary e-mail security controls for managing e-mail-borne threats, leaving customers to make do with whatever is provided by the vendor. Cisco IronPort Hosted E-mail Security provides the customer a set of advanced controls that can be leveraged to strengthen their e-mail security.

Message Tracking - In the past, customers that wanted to track messages had to open a ticket with customer support and then wait to get an answer. Cisco IronPort Hosted E-mail Security provides customers with an easy-to-use interface that allows message tracking in real time. This enables the administrator to respond to critical calls and provide answers within minutes, instead of hours.

Reporting - In addition to real time message tracking, Cisco IronPort Hosted E-mail Security provides very sophisticated management, monitoring, and reporting tools. The service includes a reporting system that provides both real-time and historical views of mail flowing through the e-mail infrastructure. This provides administrators with the necessary information to make critical security decisions in real time, export reports for management consumption, and the ability to schedule reports for automatic delivery.

Hybrid Hosted E-mail Security
The IronPort Hybrid Hosted E-mail Security Service is a unique e-mail security service that divides the e-mail security infrastructure between cloud-based and on-premises form factors. Inbound security controls (anti-spam, anti-virus, etc.) are typically implemented through the hosted infrastructure while information protection controls (DLP, encryption, etc.) are applied using on-premises appliances. This solution is suitable for organizations that want to leverage the benefits of a hosted form factor and simplify management but still maintain on-premises control of outbound data. Additional features include:

Outbound Control - Data loss prevention (DLP) is a serious issue for companies because data loss can diminish a company’s brand, reduce shareholder value, and damage the company’s goodwill. Additionally, organizations need to comply with numerous regulations that put strict requirements on how sensitive data is handled. An on-premises deployment allows customers to scan sensitive data, apply compliance controls, and even encrypt e-mail before sending it out on a public network. Combining this with a hosted inbound e-mail security solution allows companies to increase their business and operational efficiencies and still accomplish their DLP and regulatory compliance goals.

Simplified Management - While a hybrid hosted deployment option makes great business sense, administrators still have to deal with tracking and reporting of e-mail that flows through two sets of deployments. The administrator should not have to log in to two separate interfaces to search for messages or open tickets with a vendor to figure out the disposition of messages. The Hybrid Hosted E-mail solution provides customers with real-time message tracking and reporting across both the hosted and on-premises deployments. Administrators can immediately pinpoint the status of messages of interest. Additionally, they can view/download a large number of pre-configured reports and even schedule them for e-mail delivery based on time preferences.

Managed E-mail Security
The Managed E-mail Security service monitors and manages an organization’s e-mail delivery infrastructure, eliminating the need to continuously train personnel and budget for more hardware due to increasing spam volumes. This provides the highest levels of data security provided by an on-site e-mail security appliance, while taking advantage of the flexibility to delegate some or all of the management and maintenance responsibilities. Additionally, it addresses the challenges of finding trained personnel, frees resources to focus on strategic initiatives, and provides an on-premises e-mail security solution with predictable pricing. Additional features include:

Remote Monitoring and Management – Although the appliances are on-premises, they are remotely monitored and managed by the Cisco Remote Management Services team. Utilizing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) based processes, the Cisco team delivers trusted solutions to ensure business continuity. Customers still retain control of their own network and have real-time visibility into its health and status through a portal interface.

Flexible Management Models – IronPort Managed E-mail Security provides the customer with a choice when it comes to deciding the best way to manage their e-mail infrastructure. Customers may choose a Co-Managed Model where Cisco is an extension of the customer’s IT team, providing critical e-mail security management and monitoring support based on organizational needs. This model is flexible and may be customized to adapt to customer businesses processes. Alternately, customers may select a Fully-Managed Model whereby all aspects of e-mail security are remotely handled by Cisco experts. This service includes ongoing configuration support, incident management, up-to-date ticket tracking, reporting, and other operational functions.