Patent ID: 8326936

Claim:
A method for filtering a content of an email message, the method comprising: connecting an inventive network hardware appliance to an external network; including a central processing unit (CPU) on the inventive network hardware appliance; providing a memory for storing a set of computer-readable instructions executed by the central processing unit (CPU) on the inventive network hardware appliance; connecting the inventive network hardware appliance to one or more user computers; arranging the inventive network hardware appliance to intercept an email message; implementing a remote scanning service at a remote site using a stand-alone server or a plurality of servers configured to communicate with the inventive network hardware appliance to provide information on detected threats; intercepting the email message by the inventive network hardware appliance; reading the email message; checking a sender of the email message against a blacklist; checking the sender of the email message against a whitelist; checking the email message for phishing scam; checking the email message for SPAM content; generating results based on the checks performed by the inventive network hardware appliance; submitting a service request to the remote scanning service from the inventive network hardware appliance; determining if the email message contains an encrypted attachment before sending the service request to the remote scanning service; sending the service request from the inventive network hardware appliance to the remote scanning service only if the email message does not contain an encrypted attachment allowing or denying the email message based on the results and a response from the remote scanning service indicating if any threats were detected; modifying the email message to neutralize the detected threat and forwarding the modified email message to the user.