GFI MailEssentials 11's new SURBL feature further extends its lead in spam detection

GFI has announced the release of GFI  MailEssentials for Exchange/SMTP 11. The latest version of the acclaimed server-based anti-spam solution improves on its existing spam filtering techniques, which include Bayesian filtering, and adds new features that guarantee maximum spam detection rate with next-to-none false positives.

Version 11 now includes SURBL checking, to detect spam based on URLs in the message body; enhanced protection against directory harvesting attacks; a users' instant view of emails from people who have never emailed them before and the ability for administrators to configure custom  RBL servers.

"Spam costs American business nearly $22 billion a year in lost  productivity, and this figure is on the rise. Meanwhile, the increase and  variety of junk email attacks show that spammers are getting smarter. GFI  MailEssentials 11 therefore combines various up-to-the-minute technologies in its battle to outsmart spammers, achieving a detection rate of over 98%," said David Vella, Product Manager at GFI.

Support for multiple third party SURBL servers
GFI MailEssentials can now check email content also against spam URL real-time blacklists (SURBL) servers. This feature will extract links or domains from the message body and query whether these are listed on public spam URL blacklists such as sc.surbl.org. 

 Improved third party DNS blacklists (DNSBL) checking
GFI MailEssentials 11 enables administrators to configure custom real-time  blacklist (RBL) servers and multiple DNSRBL servers, add their own, and define the order of priority of servers to be checked. This improves on the product's existing third party DNS blacklist checking module, which checks against databases of known spammers such as ORDB, SpamHaus and Spamcop.

Instant view of emails from new senders
A New Senders feature has been added to provide users with an instant view of emails sent from people they never had previous (email) contact with. This helps users to better organize emails in their email client as well as minimizing false positives, since the risk of such emails being  classified as spam is reduced. If an email is not found to be spam by the GFI MailEssentials anti-spam modules and is also not on the whitelist, the New Senders module can move that email to a user's specified subfolder.

Enhanced detection of directory harvesting attacks
Spammers often try to guess recipient addresses by generating multiple random email addresses at a domain; they then send their spam mail to all those addresses. GFI MailEssentials checks the validity of ALL the email addresses included in the mail sent, either via a query to Active Directory or now through added support for LDAP. In Version 11, checking if users exist is not limited to Active Directory but is also done against other email servers which support LDAP (for example, native Exchange 5.5).  With LDAP, one can also install the product in a DMZ and then perform  look-ups against Active Directory by opening the LDAP port in the firewall.

Set priorities for each anti-spam module
Administrators can now configure which method of capturing spam is to be given priority, and create their own hierarchical list. For example, one can choose to check all incoming mail firstly against whitelists, then Bayesian scanning, thirdly against custom DNS blacklists and so on.