When an email arrives at your network, MailShield acts like a highly trained security guard at the front door. Before letting any message through, it inspects the sender, the links, and the actual content.
Before you can begin configuring these rules, you must add at least one managed domain to your account on the Policy Management page. Once your domain is configured, you can tell the gateway exactly how strict it needs to be.
How the scoring system works
Every incoming email starts with a score of zero. As MailShield scans the message, it adds points for suspicious behaviour. If the sender’s address looks forged, it adds points. If the email contains a link to a known phishing website, it adds even more points.
The total number of points an email accumulates is its final spam score. If the email reaches your chosen threshold, it is blocked from entering your inbox and placed safely into quarantine.
Note: In this system, a lower threshold number means a stricter filter, as an email is quarantined after accumulating fewer penalty points.
Choosing your sensitivity tier
Unlike older systems that ask you to guess a random threshold number, MailShield uses three pre-calibrated sensitivity tiers. You simply choose the level of protection that fits your organisation:
- Standard (Score 5): This is the default policy and provides a perfectly balanced filtering experience for most organisations. It catches the vast majority of threats without accidentally holding up your legitimate business mail.
- Strict (Score 3): This applies highly aggressive filtering. It has a lower rate of false negatives (meaning fewer spam emails slip through), but you may occasionally need to check your quarantine for legitimate emails that looked slightly suspicious.
- Compliance (Score 2): This provides maximum filtering designed specifically for highly regulated industries where security heavily outweighs convenience.
Depending on your current billing plan, some of the stricter tiers may appear locked. If you require aggressive filtering, you can easily upgrade your plan via the billing dashboard to unlock the Strict or Compliance tiers.
Managing exceptions with lists
After your first few days, you might notice that a safe email from a specific business partner is occasionally getting held. You do not need to lower your global security shield just to accommodate one sender.
Instead, simply add that partner's email address or domain (e.g., trusted-partner.com) to your Sender Allowlist. This tells MailShield that they are a trusted sender, completely bypassing the spam filter for them.
Conversely, if a persistent marketer keeps slipping into your inbox because they do not trigger enough spam points, simply add their domain to your Sender Denylist. Any future emails from them will be blocked automatically.
By using the Allowlist and Denylist to handle specific exceptions, you can keep your global spam policy incredibly strict while ensuring your team never misses an important email.