PostMaster can be used to track down unwanted e-mail/spam from within a corporation's entire connection to the Internet. PostMaster can monitor all Internet traffic flowing on high speed T3 lines, identify those e-mail messages that contain inappropriate keywords, and provide a copy of the inappropriate e-mail message for subsequent review. Unlike other approaches to this problem, this system is completely passive and does not burden the corporate system administrator.

The key to PostMaster is the ability to process all of the TCP/IP packets arriving on the T3 link in real-time, first recognizing the e-mail packets, then building separate mail transactions, and finally scanning the contents of every mail message for keywords (such as "adult", "xxx", and other words we'd rather not print). Once the inappropriate message is identified, PostMaster stores a copy of the e-mail message to a specified folder.

PostMaster is implemented using PCSI's T3IO board to monitor the corporate T-3 lines. This board breaks the data into TCP/IP packets and forwards only those packets of interest. The PC software takes the identified e-mail packets, compiles them into complete e-mail transactions, identifying the source and destination TCP/IP addresses, the e-mail source and destination, the header description and the mail body. The PC software then compares the source and destination e-mail addresses against a list to see which should be further evaluated. Those messages needing further evaluation have both the subject line and the entire e-mail body compared against a list of keywords. If the e-mail contains attachments (such as a Microsoft Word document), the attachments are also examined. Each matching keyword instance adds up to the e-mail "Keeper Score". Low scoring e-mail is dropped from further concern, but high scoring e-mail is copied to a folder for subsequent review.

PostMaster also comes with both a remote control piece of software (called PostControl) and a remote e-mail review piece of software (called PostBox). These permit connection to the PostMaster unit over a LAN so the process can be monitored at a different location.

If you are a corporation interested in this advanced technology solution to your internal e-mail problem, please contact Darius Mohsenin at General Dynamics (Darius.Mohsenin@gd-es.com).

Please click to see a review of our PostMaster product at Surveillance Expo 2000.

Last modified: 7 July 2001