Avira Managed Email Security (AMES) User Guide
Table of Contents Table of Contents 1. Product information ................................................................. 4 1.1 Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 1.2 Licensing AMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 2. Getting started with AMES ........................................................ 6 2.
Table of Contents 5. User management .................................................................. 34 5.1 User management in advanced mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 6. Statistics .............................................................................. 39 7. Support ................................................................................
Product information 1. Product information Thank you for taking a look at the Avira Managed Email Security (AMES) manual. This manual will help you get started with AMES, as well as customizing AMES to your specific needs. You will have peace in your inbox in no time. 1.1 Functionality Avira Managed Email Security (AMES) is a service dedicated to stopping spam or viruses before they reach your company’s network. This is achieved by routing the emails to our AMES server cluster.
Product information Release notes To keep you up to date with the latest developments, we placed a link to the Release notes page (available at Partner and domain administrator levels only). 1.2 Licensing AMES When you let your Avira Partner purchase a license for AMES, you need to choose the number of users. These users correspond to the total number of people in your organization, that are going to use AMES to filter emails.
Getting started with AMES 2. Getting started with AMES You'll find that once your Avira Partner has set up a license for your domain, the rest of the configuration is surprisingly easy. If you don't have an Avira Partner yet, please take a look at the Avira Partner Locator on our website. 2.1 Adding a new domain to AMES To add a new domain to AMES, please call your Avira Partner. They will then register your details, request a license and add the domain to AMES. 2.
Getting started with AMES 2.3 Configuring the AMES domain For each new domain, one generic user is created (see "The catch-all user" - page 12) and the mail delivery is set to the currently used mail server. This means, you can start using AMES without any further configuration and the email flow will not be interrupted. Normally, your partner carries out the domain configuration for you, but if for some reason you need to do this yourself, we'll guide you in the process.
Getting started with AMES 4. Firewall settings 5. User configuration Configuring the DNS server To activate the scanning and filtering of incoming emails, you have to change the MXsettings in the DNS server for the domain. The correct records are in the order confirmation email. If correct, the MX records are displayed in green under Domain DNS information in the Services tab of the Domain overview.In case the MX records are not correctly set, a message in red is displayed.
Getting started with AMES After directing the MX records to the Avira AMES cluster, the managed service is active and will scan and filter the incoming emails. The filtered and scanned emails will be delivered to the regular mailbox. Configuring security and firewall After DNS changes are complete and propagated correctly, make sure the receiving mail server accepts only emails coming from the AMES server cluster mentioned in the order confirmation email.
Setting your AMES domains and users 3. Setting your AMES domains and users 3.1 Making general domain settings First, you should check the general settings of the new domain. 1. In the Domain overview, click the Domain tab. The Domain status link opens the 5-step domain activation assistant (see "The Domain status assistant" - page 7). 2. Your partner can activate or deactivate your domain. The license type and the maximum number of users for the domain are displayed under Domain settings. 3.
Setting your AMES domains and users When released from quarantine, blocked emails can be released as attachment or as the original message. To set this behavior for the entire domain, use the option Type of quarantine release: • Release as the original message - Send the original message to the users’ inboxes. • Release as an attachment - Send the blocked message as attachment to a warning email to the users’ inboxes. 3.2 Setting the services available to end-users 1.
Setting your AMES domains and users 3.3 Adding new users to a domain When AMES is configured for your domain, the users you provide have to operate properly. If an email is sent to the email address test@demo.domain, the user test has to exist, or the email will bounce back to the sender. The catch-all user By default, AMES has one catch-all user. A catch-all user is convenient because it receives emails for all users on your domain. Note Avira discourages the use of a "catch-all" setting.
Setting your AMES domains and users 3. Type the User name and Password for your new user. The password has to be minimum 6 characters long. The password strength is shown as you type: 4. If you'd like this user to be able to manage the domain’s settings on https://ames.avira.com, enable the Domain admin option. 5. You can apply the settings from an existing user, by selecting it from the drop-down list Copy settings from. 6. When finished, click Save.
Setting your AMES domains and users • ContentFilter - Message components are scanned, according to the whitelist/ blacklist content rules. • Auto-reply - The users are allowed to activate the auto-reply service. • SMTP Deliver - Messages are delivered to the SMTP mail server. • Mail forward - Messages are forwarded to another email address. 3.3.2 Adding multiple users to a domain (Mass Add) 1. To add multiple users at once, go to the Domain overview, click the Users tab and press Mass Add. 2.
Setting your AMES domains and users 3.4 Import/ Export the list of domain users Avira-Partners and AMES domain administrators can import/ export the list of the users of a domain in a csv-type file. The file is editable and contains the settings for each user. It can be used to easily add or modify the settings for a large number of users (mass updates). 1. To carry out an import or export of the users’ list, go to the Domain overview, click the Domain tab and scroll down to the CSV Import/Export section.
Setting your AMES domains and users - modified user - deleted user 3.5 Adding a user alias User aliases can be used to assign multiple email addresses to one user. 1. If you'd like to create an alias, select the user from the Users tab. The Services tab for the selected user opens: 2. Add one or more email addresses in the Email aliases field (e.g. tester.one@domain.demo). Insert each of them on a new line, not separated by other characters. 3. Click Save on the bottom of the page when done.
Setting your AMES domains and users Greylisting Warning If you'd like to use a catch-all address, use the * placeholder (*@domain.demo), but please note: The use of a so-called catch-all setting, where every combination of characters in front of the domain name is accepted as an email address (*@example.com), makes your domain extra vulnerable to spam and viruses. This is why AMES enables advanced greylisting for all catch-all users.
Setting your AMES domains and users 4. If you did not enable the option Send mail to users, make sure you save this list and send the credentials to each of the users. 3.7 Synchronization settings (LDAP/ CSV) These settings are only available to Avira Partners, because of the possible consequences of misconfiguration. Please contact your Avira partner for more information. 3.
Setting your AMES domains and users 1. To change mail delivery settings, select a User and go to the Services tab. 2. Under Mail deliver options, you can choose between two methods: - Activate SMTP Deliver. Under SMTP Deliver server(s), you can add one or more hosts or IP addresses, to which AMES will deliver the emails. - Activate Mail forward. Under Forward your email to this address, you can type one or more email addresses to which AMES will deliver your emails. 3. Click Save when done. 3.
Setting your AMES domains and users 1. Select the User you'd like to add a signature for and go to the Signature tab. 2. Activate the option Signature for incoming email and write the text in the text area. -ORClick the Reset to default link, to use a standard signature. 3. Click Save. Adding a signature to outgoing emails You can add a domain-specific signature to outgoing emails, in case you use the Relay service (see 2.4 Scanning outgoing emails - page 9). 1.
Setting your AMES domains and users 2. Activate the option Signature for outgoing email and write the text in the text area. -ORClick the Reset to default link, to use a standard signature. 3. Click Save. 3.11 Setting up an automatic reply 1.
Quarantine Management 4. Quarantine Management 4.1 Configuring the email filters AMES comprises a variety of email filtering and analysis tools. You can configure your AMES account to remove infected emails immediately, to send them to quarantine or just to place a tag in their subject. Furthermore, you can set the heuristic level of the spam control, define advanced spam rules and content filtering rules.
Quarantine Management 2. Select the action you want to apply to infected emails, spam emails or filtered content: - Under handle viruses: select Quarantine, if infected emails should be quarantined for 14 days, then deleted; or select Remove, if infected emails should be deleted immediately (default setting).
Quarantine Management - Domain - Keep the setting made by the domain administrator for the entire domain (see 3.1 Making general domain settings - page 10). - Original - Send the original message in the user’s inbox. - Attachment - Send the blocked message as attachment to a warning email to the user’s inbox. 4. Click Save to save the settings. 4.1.
Quarantine Management • Severe - blocks messages with a heuristic spam score greater than 65%. • Very severe - blocks messages with a heuristic spam score greater than 55%. The default setting is Normal. Note For organizations with a normal rate of spam we recommend the Normal level. As a result of setting the SpamFilter to Severe or Very severe, legitimate email with spam properties might be blocked.
Quarantine Management Note SpamFilter rules are also added when you use the whitelist options Safe Sender or Safe Domain in the Email Quarantine Summary. See "Whitelist Options" - page 29. Content Filter In the ContentFilter settings, you can set attachment rules or custom rules: • Attachments: Click the checkboxes in the first column of the extensions list, to block certain file types. The list contains the following recommendations: - block: you should block this type of attachment.
Quarantine Management To add a custom rule: 1. Select a filter criterion from the drop-down list: - subject contains: allows or blocks emails containing a certain subject. - message contains: allows or blocks emails containing a certain string. - message size larger than: blocks emails exceeding a maximum message size in Kb. 2. Type the text you want to filter for (e.g. Avira Newsletter) or the maximum message size (e.g. 5120). 3. Select the rule type: block or allow. 4. Click Save, to add the rule.
Quarantine Management 2. Enable Virus notification, to receive a warning by email, whenever a virus is intercepted. 3. Enable Spam quarantine to receive a daily summary of intercepted spam, according to the settings you make under Reporting options: • Report language - currently you can choose between: English, German, Spanish, French and Dutch. • Report address - insert one email address, to which AMES will send virus notifications and spam summary.
Quarantine Management As Avira-Partner or AMES domain administrator, you can generate a quarantine report and send it to all users of a domain: Go to the Domain overview > Services, scroll down to the Quarantine report section and click Send. 4.3 Managing the quarantines directly from your email account Once the daily summary report is activated, the user receives an email every day, as scheduled, with the list of eventual new spam messages.
Quarantine Management Warning It is not recommended to use the Safe Domain option for public domains, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc. If you wish to view your entire quarantine or manage your preferences, you can click the link to the AMES web interface, which opens the login page to your AMES account. You can first check the details of the quarantined message, by clicking its subject (e.g. Part-Time Work) in the Subject column of the Quarantine Summary.
Quarantine Management 4.4 Managing the quarantines from your AMES account To open the quarantine, select a User then go to the Quarantine tab. AMES has three different quarantines, for different types of filtering. Click the name of each quarantine, to check its contents. Virus quarantine If your account is set to quarantine infected emails for 14 days, the Virus quarantine stores all emails with virus signatures. To delete specific emails, select the items in the list and click Delete.
Quarantine Management Spam quarantine If your account is set to quarantine spam emails for 30 days, the Spam quarantine stores all intercepted spam emails. To delete specific emails, select the items in the list and click Delete. To delete all the messages in this quarantine, click Delete All. AMES will automatically delete spam emails after 30 days.
Quarantine Management Note You can completely rely on AMES default settings, but if needed, you can customize them. If you set the spam filter too high, your spam quarantine could also intercept ham. 'Ham' is email falsely identified as spam. If you get ham in your quarantine, or receive emails falsely tagged as spam in your email client, you might want to check the Advanced settings of the SpamFilter (see "SpamFilter" - page 24).
User management 5. User management As Avira partner or AMES domain administrator, you can manage all the users of a domain in the Domain overview, on the Users tab.
User management 5.1 User management in advanced mode If you enable the Advanced mode option, you can easily configure the services for single or multiple users in just three steps. 1. First, select the group of settings from the drop-down list above the table: - General - Services - Filter options - Blacklist - Whitelist - Report general - Report content 2. Then, select the users you want to edit: Click the checkboxes in the first column, to select the users.
User management To filter the list by certain criteria, use one or more fields below the column headers. To clear all the filters and display the entire users list again, click the Reset filters button. 3. Finally, make the changes to the users’ settings: If you just want to delete the selected users, click Delete selected then press OK to confirm the action. Click the Edit selected button, to start editing the services for the selected users.
User management 5. Click Next to review the changes. 6. You can click Show or Hide, to display or to hide the list of selected users in the overview window. 7. Click Apply, then Close. The changes you made will be updated in the Users view. Overview of the settings available in Advanced mode Groups of settings Settings General (See 3.
User management Groups of settings Blacklist / Whitelist Report general Report content Settings Options Spam level Very relaxed Relaxed Normal Severe Very severe Release type Domain Original Attachment (See 4.1.2 Adjusting the filter settings - page 24) Senders Add entries / Delete entries (+ sender addresses) Domains Add entries / Delete entries (+ sender domains) Hosts Add entries / Delete entries (+ hosts) (See 4.
Statistics 6. Statistics AMES creates statistics regarding the scanned emails, intercepted viruses, spam and filtered content, per domain and per user. Click the Statistics tab, to check them out. The information about the processed emails is divided into: • incoming (green) - the amount of incoming emails; the dark-green segment represents the incoming emails, for which greylisting was NOT applied. Greylisting is only applied to catch-all users. See "Greylisting" - page 17.
Statistics If you select for example, the current month, day-by-day statistics are also available for the selected user or domain. Similarly, if you select a year, you can see month-by-month statistics, for a user or domain. You can also check the report on the Top 10 viruses that have been intercepted by AMES in the selected period.
Statistics Further statistics display the Top 25 senders and Top 25 recipients of emails during the selected period.
Support 7. Support Support service All necessary information on our comprehensive support service can be obtained from our website http://www.avira.com. FAQs Please also read the FAQ section on our website. Your questions may already have been asked and answered by other users in this section. Please contact your Avira Partner - they will be more than willing to help you with any further questions regarding Avira products. Contact Address Avira Operations GmbH & Co.
This manual was created with great care. However, errors in design and contents cannot be excluded. The reproduction of this publication or parts thereof in any form is prohibited without previous written consent from Avira Operations GmbH & Co. KG. Issued Q1-2012 Brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Protected trademarks are not marked as such in this manual. However, this does not mean that they may be used freely. © 2012 Avira. All rights reserved.
