Mail eXchanger (MX) record setup with Email Security.cloud

Products

• Email Security.cloud

Issue/Introduction

 You want to setup your Mail eXchanger (MX) records for inbound mail with Email Security.cloud.

To ensure that all of your email is scanned, you need to configure your organization's MX records correctly. First, you need to identify who hosts your domain or domains. You can use a third-party provider to check who your DNS provider is.

Each provider supplies an online form to make any changes. The changes that you need to make are outlined in the Solution section below.

A set of MX records may look like the following:

your-domain.com      MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.your-domain.com
your-domain.com      MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = relay.your-isp.com

Resolution

In order to have your organization's email traffic scanned by the Email Security.cloud services, you need to ensure that all your email is directed to our scanning servers. There are both primary and secondary records to be configured and they must be prioritized properly to ensure consistent mailflow. The proper format and hierarchy is outlined below: 

your-domain.com      MX preference = 10, mail exchanger = clusterX.XX.messagelabs.com
your-domain.com      MX preference = 20, mail exchanger = clusterXa.XX.messagelabs.com

Note that the first X represents the Cluster number you are provisioned on and the XX represents the Region. You must not include your own Mailhost (mailhost.your-domain.com in this example) anywhere in the MX records. If it remains, some email may be delivered directly to your mail server and hence not get scanned.

For MX records, the higher the number, the lower the priority. 

Most DNS changes take up to 24 hours to propagate.