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Trend Micro Leads in Antispam

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 February 2009, 10:00 CST

Spam has become increasingly malicious and companies need better overall antispam to protect their business. In independent antispam tests, Trend Micro had the highest spam catch rate.

CUPERTINO, Calif., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- In a comparative test of ten antispam products, both of the Trend Micro solutions tested received the highest antispam catch rates. Trend Micro InterScan(TM) Messaging Hosted Security had the highest catch rate at 96.71 percent, followed closely by Trend Micro InterScan(TM) Messaging Security Suite at 96.48 percent.

The test applied out-of-box configurations for all products so the results would mimic what a customer experiences when they first install the product. No antispam training was conducted on any of the products tested. Although both Trend Micro products use the same antispam technologies, Trend Micro provides continual updates and tuning for its hosted service, explaining the better catch rate upon deployment.

Both solutions are part of Trend Micro(TM) Enterprise Security, designed to provide immediate protection with less complexity and close the vulnerability window before damage is done. Given the dramatic rate of spam increase in the last few years, customers need this type of proactive security they can manage across their organizations.

The test, which was conducted by West Coast Labs over a six day period, included appliances by Barracuda, Fortinet, Ironport and McAfee; software programs by Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro and Websense; and a SaaS offering by Trend Micro.

The products with the lowest detection rates were McAfee and Fortinet, with catch rates at less than 80 percent. The false positive rates were minimal across all solutions, except Microsoft, which recorded a significant false positive rate of 0.71 percent.

Richard Thomas, senior test engineer, West Coast Labs concluded that, "Overall, both of the solutions provided by Trend Micro for this test demonstrated better protection rates for end users using this live test set against the other solutions tested."

Spam Volume Will Continue to Grow

According to TrendLabs(SM), 115 billion spammed messages are being sent every day. Ninety-nine percent of spam comes from compromised computers, including those with malicious communication to and from remote users. Spam is all about numbers as the more spam sent, the greater the chance users will click. Spam will not go away but it will increasingly employ social engineering techniques to improve its conversion rates.

As one of the primary vehicles for spreading blended Web threats, spam has consistently risen over the years and the U.S. continues to be the "most spammed" country, receiving 22.5 percent of all spam, while Europe is the most spammed continent. While malicious spam attachments have been infecting users for years, 2008 saw a huge increase in spam that employed social engineering techniques as cybercriminals find new and corruptive ways in targeting victims for profit. Stopping malicious spam is critical in maintaining corporate network security and protecting essential business data.

Trend Micro InterScan Messaging Security Suite provides comprehensive spam, phishing, malware and virus protection, as well as flexible policy-based content filtering, and easy-to-use management tools to help monitor and control SMTP and POP3 traffic at the messaging gateway. It helps safeguard against the loss of intellectual property and confidential information, integrated with Trend Micro(TM) Email Encryption Gateway. In addition, InterScan Messaging Security minimizes server congestion, and helps maintain employee productivity. InterScan Messaging Security leverages Trend Micro Control Manager(TM), a platform-independent management tool, for centralized updating, consolidated reporting, and remote configuration capabilities.

Trend Micro's hosted email security solution , InterScan Messaging Hosted Security stops spam, viruses, spyware, phishing and other email threats before they reach the corporate network, helping customers reclaim IT staff time, end-user productivity, bandwidth and mail server storage. As a hosted solution, it requires no hardware or software to install and maintain, and Trend Micro's worldwide team of experts manages all hot fixes, patches, updates and application tuning to continuously optimize security and performance.

Third Parties Demonstrate the Value of Trend Micro(TM) Smart Protection Network

Trend Micro, in a separate test conducted by another lab, also exceeded competitors McAfee, IronPort, Websense, Blue Coat, SurfControl in blocking malicious URLs that are associated with Web threats. Utilizing Trend Micro's Web reputation technology, which is part of the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network, provided up to 11 percent better protection than the next competitor.

In addition, a recent report found that Trend Micro Smart Protection Network helped reduce malware-related customer support calls by up to 75 percent. A cloud-client security architecture designed to stop Web threats, Trend Micro Smart Protection Network provides instant, real-time protection, and a smarter way to combat Web threats compared to traditional methods of protection.

West Coast Labs Test Methodology

West Coast Labs used their live corporate enterprise spam feed, multiplexed across each of the products, so that each solution received the same emails. Testing was conducted over a total of six days with subsequent analysis.

For the West Coast Labs Executive Summary report, please visit: http://go.trendmicro.com/antispamreport

About West Coast Labs

Part of the Haymarket Media Group, West Coast Labs is a global leader in technical research, testing and the Checkmark Certification of information security products and services. With market-leading technology and testing facilities accredited to ISO17025 in the UK, USA and India, West Coast Labs' services and the Checkmark Certification System are being used by the leading global brands to create market advantage and by large business enterprises for obtaining crucial technical insight into product performance.

About Trend Micro:

Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in Internet content security, focuses on securing the exchange of digital information for businesses and consumers. A pioneer and industry vanguard, Trend Micro is advancing integrated threat management technology to protect operational continuity, personal information, and property from malware, spam, data leaks and the newest Web threats. Visit TrendWatch at www.trendmicro.com/go/trendwatch to learn more about the threats. Trend Micro's flexible solutions, available in multiple form factors, are supported 24/7 by threat intelligence experts around the globe. Many of these solutions are powered by the Trend Micro(TM) Smart Protection Network, a next generation cloud-client content security infrastructure designed to protect customers from Web threats. A transnational company, with headquarters in Tokyo, Trend Micro's trusted security solutions are sold through its business partners worldwide. Please visit www.trendmicro.com.

SOURCE Trend Micro Incorporated

Source: PR Newswire

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