Halon Protect 12 Delivers Improvements in Efficiency, Connections, and User Experience

Halon Protect 12 is a leap forward for mailbox providers, delivering a powerful combination of efficiency, connections, and future-proof functionality. This update empowers you to manage inbound email with greater speed and confidence, ensuring a superior experience for your users. 

Discover the key features and improvements

• Async DNS resolutions: Async DNS resolutions for speedier authentication and spam checks.
• Cassandra support: Import and export data seamlessly between Halon Protect and your Cassandra database with our brand new plugin.
• Amazon S3 support: Upload emails directly to Amazon S3 for secure delivery, quarantine, or archiving.
• Email address internationalization in DKIM/DMARC: Support for internationalized email addresses in DKIM/DMARC for advanced compliance.
• Dark mode for the self-service user interface (MSUI): Improved user experience with a new dark mode for the self-service dashboard.
• Added visual cues in halontop: With enhanced visual cues, we’ve improved the readability of our handy command-line tool for monitoring queues and deliveries in real-time. 

Async DNS resolutions - No more waiting, just blazing-fast performance

Functions like dns_query(), spf_query(), and verifyDKIM() now operate asynchronously, significantly boosting concurrency and efficiency. Authentication checks, abuse detection, and DNSBL queries no longer block Halon script execution, allowing massive parallelism. This frees up resources for other critical tasks, leading to a more optimized and efficient system.

Seamless import and export functionality with new Cassandra support plugin

Halon Protect 12 has expanded its existing portfolio of external connections by introducing the brand-new Cassandra plugin. This exciting addition offers seamless import and export functionality between Halon Protect and your Cassandra database.

Ascend to S3 cloud with secure storage and speedy delivery

Halon Protect 12 levels up email storage and processing with native Amazon S3 integration. This eliminates the need for complex workarounds by allowing direct uploads to S3 for secure delivery, quarantining, or archiving of emails. 

If you handle mission-critical email and need extreme and geo-redundant queue data safety, Halon is now offering a ready-made integration for the S3 protocol.

Future-proof email authentication with unicode email address support

Halon has supported SMTPUTF8 since 2017. However, this release adds support for unicode email addresses in DKIM and DMARC authentications. Although this standard is not widely used yet, and most email infrastructure or MTA platforms do not support it, we are at the forefront of compliance with standards to ensure you are future-ready.

The self-service portal (MSUI) has a new look: dark mode

Who doesn't love dark mode? We listened to you and added dark mode to MSUI, our ready-to-deploy, self-service user interface for managed service providers.

Added visual cues in halontop for improved readability

halontop is a handy command-line tool for monitoring queues and deliveries in real-time. To enhance the visual cues, we've added colors to improve the readability of the output. This subtle change makes the experience more delightful.

At Halon, we're committed to continuous improvement and take pride in making your email infrastructure better with every release. We're always searching for ways to enhance your experience with Halon. For a full list of improvements, please see the changelog.

If you have ideas, requests, or feedback, don't hesitate to share them with us at support@halon.io. Your input is valuable in shaping the future of Halon.