• Instant, proactive spam filter detection
  Spam is stopped cold through advanced, rules-based scanning and scoring plus six levels of intelligent spam detection
  
  
• Personalized spam detection rules
  Administrators can easily modify the default rules, and users can create their own black- and whitelists for the spam filter to control what they do and don’t want to receive
  
  
• Multiple quarantine options
  Detected spam can be selectively routed depending on its spam probability "score"; this reduces false positives by allowing users to check low-rated messages
  
  
• Centralized management, monitoring, and detailed reporting SpamKiller integrates with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator®, the industry’s leading tool for enterprise-class system security management
  
  
• Integrated anti-virus protection
  SpamKiller may be augmented with McAfee GroupShield® for complete, comprehensive anti-virus security and content filtering

Product Features

Highly accurate rules-based scanning
The SpamKiller product family is powered by the McAfee SpamAssassin® engine, which scores or rates emails based on a series of tests. This highly effective technology catches spam email, with a very low false-positive rate.

Spam scoring system
Spam scoring is an essential spam-detection safeguard for the spam filter, as it can differentiate legitimate “gray-area” messages that less sophisticated products would incorrectly label as spam. Utilizing an extensive rule set, the McAfee SpamAssassin scoring system runs literally hundreds of rules against each email. Rules have a negative or positive score, with negative denoting legitimate email and positive indicating unsolicited email or spam. 

Six levels of spam filter protection

• Integrity Analysis - SpamKiller examines the header, layout and organization of each email message, to identify the common characteristics of spam.
• Heuristic detection - A series of internal tests determines the likelihood of a message being spam, and each test carries a score to help reduce false positives.
• Content filtering - This functionality identifies key words or phrases that appear in an email, which could indicate that the message is spam.
• Black- and whitelists - Set the standards at the server-level to determine spam email by using the global whitelist and blacklist settings. Individuals may supplement the rule set at the desktop by defining their own spam filter whitelist and blacklist entries.
• Bayesian filtering – McAfee SpamKiller provides Bayesian filtering technology to allow email messages to be “intelligently” assessed for spam and non-spam criteria.
• Self-tuning - SpamAssassin learns the characteristics of the email you receive. It adjusts the overall spam rating for new messages, when sent by a known sender.

Advanced content management (Microsoft Exchange only)
Capabilities of the spam filter for Exchange include group-based policy with granular departmental rule sets; lexical scanning of emails and attachment content based on content management rules; content scanning of over 300 email attachment types, including Adobe® Acrobat and Microsoft Office; true file-attachment-type identification to prevent common rule evasion; automatic alerting when an email or attachment contains sensitive or offensive information; the ability to replace any email or attached document containing words or phrases specified in content rules; prevention of sensitive corporate data from leaving the organization.

Tiered spam routing
Detected spam can be routed selectively, depending on its score. An email with a score below 5 could go to the user’s inbox; messages scored 5 through 14 could go to the user’s junk folder, and email rated 15 or higher could go to the system junk folder. This helps reduce false-positives by allowing users to personally check low-rate or “gray-area” messages.

Centralized management and detailed reporting
McAfee SpamKiller integrates with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator for comprehensive policy management and detailed graphical reporting. Administrators can configure and enforce policy and monitor the effectiveness of their security and anti-virus safeguards. Policies can be configured for anti-virus and content filtering rules for individuals or groups of users.

Anti-phishing
SpamKiller includes specific rules that help to identify phishing attacks by looking for certain phishing-specific characteristics that can be present in e-mail. Once triggered, these spam filter rules are automatically assigned an overall spam rating by SpamKiller, which results, in most cases, with the messages being blocked. Together with the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), McAfee has compiled a thorough database of phishing attacks and uses the knowledge from these attacks to create effective filtering rules.