Dark Traffic can represent up to two-thirds of all inbound email traffic and is comprised of a combination of spam and spam precursors – such as directory harvest attacks (DHA), email denial of service (DoS) attacks, malformed SMTP packets, invalid recipient addresses, and other requests and communications unrelated to the delivery of valid email messages. Unlike most email hygiene solutions that examine the content of these communications, MailGate is able to efficiently eliminate this invalid traffic at the gateway, saving computationally intensive content filtering bandwidth.

How big is this problem?
Many organizations report up to 90% of raw email traffic is invalid. Typical spam filters search content, not network patterns and get bogged down processing invalid messages. Exposing your directory leads to more spam and serious security risks.

MailGate’s Edge module uses a secure email relay that takes a network-based approach to blocking dark traffic, freeing content-based solutions to process the remaining third of traffic. 

Benefits

With MailGate’s Edge module, organizations can:

• Instantly reduce inbound traffic and load by detecting and preventing DoS and DHA attacks.
• Control SMTP errors and create IP-based block and allow lists.
• Verify recipients before they enter your network.
• Significantly reduce costs by optimizing network performance and eliminating the need for costly email server upgrades.

Learn more about MailGate’s Edge capabilities.