The security features described in this section are available to users, provided they have been activated by the administrator.
The Message Center is a web console, that allows users to manage the messages that were routed to their quarantine and which gives them an access to their personal archive.
The Message Center includes a set of tools that allow users to manage the messages that were put into quarantine and to access their personal archive
The Postini system periodically sends a summary to each user with a list of spam and suspect messages that were quarantined since the last summary. The message contains a link to the Message Center where messages can be inspected safely.
Here, we will provide a description of the main features of the Message Center, in the same order in which they are organized in the tabs.
The following figure shows the spam quarantine. By consulting this quarantine regularly, users can identify messages that were wrongly identified as spam and recover them. They can also adjust the anti-spam settings (see the following).
By default, this quarantine is available to each user in the domain.
The quarantine for messages infected by viruses is very similar to the previous one. Users are sent a mail notification when an infected message is put in the quarantine. Actually, if the domain administrator takes no special action, infected messages are simply deleted and thus users will find their quarantine empty. This behavior can be changed, however (see the following).
The infected message quarantine in the Message Center
The Message Center allows reading an infected message under safe conditions. By default, Postini simply deletes infected messages. Users won't see them in their quarantined messages. For infected messages to be available for reading, the administrator should first enable archiving.
This quarantine stores messages that were identified as zero-hour threats, even though a formal virus signature has not yet been recognized. By default, this tab is not shown in the Message Center. This quarantine works the same way as the usual infected message quarantine. Safe reading of messages is guaranteed. Here again, users are notified by mail when one of their messages is put in this quarantine.
This tab is only available if you have subscribed to the Message Discovery Service that comes as a complement to the Google Apps for Business Edition subscription. All messages from all users are stored for a period of time that must be specified when subscribing to the Message Discovery service. Users can, in particular, recover the messages that they deleted by mistake.
It is important to note that once a message has been archived it cannot be changed anymore. This feature makes archiving suitable for legal purposes. The archiving period can last for decades.
The form that allows searching the personal archive.
The form offers the usual set of criteria such as:
With Postini, a domain administrator can define lists of users, domains, and mailing lists that won't be analyzed by any of the message filters. Messages from those sources will be routed to their recipient's mailbox without any further analysis.
Conversely, it is also possible to define a list of users who will be blocked systematically. Messages from these sources will automatically be labeled as spam and then routed to the corresponding quarantine.
There are two kinds of settings for tuning the spam filter. First, there is a parameter that defines a global level of tolerance for all kinds of illicit content. Then there are separate parameters that control the level of protection for each category of illicit content.
The threshold for the spam filter is adjusted by setting two kinds of parameters: a global one and one per category of illicit content
Increasing the value of either parameter increases the chances that a message is put into quarantine. When high values are chosen, it is a good idea to regularly check the quarantine to ensure that none of them were wrongly quarantined.