Our ICMS scanners are a bank of dell servers behind a load-balancer, running a linux operating system and additional software packages loaded on to produce a tested bespoke platform.  There function primarily is virus and content email scanning, however as a second nature they also scan for spam. 

Virus Scanning

Viruses can be very damaging to a network or individual machine.  As a result our scanners are set a little too sensitive to ensure no single virus is passed through.  The software used is updated automatically to ensure the latest virus definitions are used to keep up with the current releases.

Content Scanning 

None of us like to receive those emails containing foul mouthed language or spam emails with specific words.  Over the years our scanners have built up a list to search through, that if discovered will be rejected preventing the message passing through to the recipient. 

Spam Scanning

Spam is a very real problem and is constantly bombarding all Internet Service Providers mail servers.  Our scanners will scan every piece of mail running a series of tests, at the end of these tests a score is awarded, should this score be above a preset limit the mail is deemed as highly likely spam and continues down to the recipient with the subject changed to (*****SPAM*****).  This can be amended to suit the domains requirements.  If however during the testing the score is above a second preset limit or the senders IP is listed within three out of five blacklist databases the spam is deemed as definite spam and discarded with no notification.

Note

As of Febuary 2008 we implemented additional hardware in front of the scanners; a 50B, the smallest of the hardware appliances available in the range.  The device was left uncustomised to run basic checks on the mail allowing the scanners to operate at a lower level and so further remove definite spam and viruses.  This implementation has been a huge success, within twenty four hours 1023 viruses have been caught, and 249507 have been denied, a true testimant to how well the advanced email security devices can work.