How Email Flow Works

Environment : Comodo Dome Antispam

Summary : Understanding How Email Flow Works Briefly

In order to better understand how Secure Email Gateway like Comodo Dome Antispam works in conjunction with companies' mail servers (MTAs), the path the email message takes must be understood.

• An email is initiated from one organization to the other. For instance; an email from someone at Senderdomain.com is sent to someone at Recipientdomain.com Company’s Network.
• The Comodo mail server will look up the MX record of Recipientdomain.com. This record will contain the Domain Name or IP address of the first hop in Recipientdomain.com’s email architecture. This first hop is the first level of inspection that Recipientdomain.com wants performed on their email.
• Since Recipientdomain.com is using Comodo SEG, this will be the first hop for the inbound email.
• Comodo SEG then inspects the email via Comodo’s world class email and web reputation service for threats such as: Spams, Phishings, Viruses, Spywares.
• If the email passes the Comodo SEG checks, it is then sent to Recipientdomain.com’s next hop, which is company's mail server such as on-premises Microsoft Office Outlook or cloud Office 365 email server.
• After further processing by company's mail server, the email is then sent to the recipient’s mailbox.