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Cloudmark Reports Up to 92% of Email Is Spam; Processing 3 Billion Messages Per Day

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 August 2006, 09:00 CDT

Cloudmark, provider of the world's fastest, most accurate messaging security solutions worldwide, says data indicates that 92% of all email now constitutes some form of "messaging abuse": annoying spam, phishing scams attempting to steal personal information, or email-borne viruses. With an installed base of more than 50 service providers worldwide and over 100 million protected mailboxes, Cloudmark now processes three billion messages per day.

Grappling With Growth

Cloudmark says the growth in the number and diversity of unwanted email poses increasingly complex and costly challenges for service providers: spam unstopped at the edge of the network translates to a greater burden on the messaging transfer agent (MTA), the inbound and outbound messaging servers, and the storage servers as unfiltered, undeleted spam clogs up the message store. Additionally, customer service complaints due to spam-related issues -- namely false positives and false criticals -- are expensive, with low-level complaints hitting help desks directly at $12-15 per call, and escalated issues costing significantly more.

Cloudmark Focuses on Service Provider Solutions

Increased Intelligence at the Provider's Edge: Today, most messaging security solutions consist of a set of rudimentary protocol filters at the network's edge combined with a content filter on the internal Messaging Transfer Agent (MTA). Cloudmark Authority is the first content filter with fast enough performance to run at the network's edge, at scale, in a service provider environment. Cloudmark enables service providers to flag or block over 98% of all spam, phishing and viruses at the network's edge in record time, and with fewer false negatives and positives than traditional solutions.

End-to-end Solution: A chief problem with messaging security has been the lack of a cohesive infrastructure addressing concerns from the customer interface to the infrastructure beyond the MTAs. Cloudmark captures information at every step and helps messaging executives streamline the process and communicate issues and answers both to customers and C-level executives.

Policy-based Management: Providers seek to employ faster, more targeted responses to various types of unwanted mail. New intelligence built into Cloudmark Authority helps providers distinguish between generic spam, illegal phishing scams, email-borne viruses, grey content such as newsletters, and other types of mail and set policies for handling accordingly. (See related release, Cloudmark Introduces Policy-based Control of Unwanted Email, August 16, 2006)

Reputation: The implications of not being able to halt spam before it leaves the network are two-fold. Providers' own reputations are at stake as industry watch groups now rank providers according to how much spam originates from their networks. The traditional response, IP or domain black-listing, can be severe with good and bad mail blocked. By preventing verified spammers from sending mail as well as taking corrective action on zombied platforms, providers protect their reputation and keep subscribers safe.

Infrastructure and Operations Costs: With more than 90% of all email unwanted, service providers are wasting millions of dollars and other resources processing bad messages, ensuring accuracy in blocking bad messages or responding to complaints about those messages falsely identified as spam. Aside from the costs many are incurring to add dozens of servers to process spam, a staggering 50-70% of stored messages are typically unwanted mail, with storage costs typically exceeding $1M per year per service provider. A significant increase in customer service calls due to subscriber frustration and churn are among the most serious repercussions of not providing subscribers with adequate, accurate protection.

Cloudmark Founder and Chief Scientist Vipul Ved Prakash says increased intelligence at the edge will help service providers round the corner on messaging security. "For the past two years, the sheer growth in the volume of unwanted mail, and the trend of attackers becoming more technically sophisticated and better funded has made it challenging for service providers to keep pace," Prakash says. "Currently Cloudmark and its partners and customers are focused on deterring abusive mail before it starts consuming and compromising network resources. By doing this with great accuracy, we can in turn improve subscriber satisfaction while saving millions and putting those compromising the sanctity of email out of business."

Cloudmark is renowned for industry leading speed and accuracy in blocking spam, phishing and email-borne viruses. Leveraging trust-rated reporting and sophisticated automated responses, Cloudmark Authority delivers the most intelligent, proactive solution for ensuring messaging security. Preliminary results in a recent trial by an independent tester demonstrate that Cloudmark is significantly more effective than the legacy service provider in the ability of its Authority platform to rapidly respond to new threats, with accuracy rates more than 17 percentage points higher. On a system receiving five million messages per day, the variance represents 850,000 additional messages blocked daily, translating to savings in server and storage hardware, and reaping even bigger dividends in customer satisfaction.

About Cloudmark Authority:

Cloudmark's carrier-class solution provides an immediate improvement in filtering performance and lowered resource utilization -- allowing operations staff to be more productive and to achieve the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Multi-tiered protection against spam and phishing messages enables varied filtering technologies to be deployed at different points in the network, configured according to each service provider's unique topology and policy objectives. More than 50 wireline and wireless carriers have chosen Cloudmark as their core anti-abuse solution while dozens more trial Authority every day.

About Cloudmark, Inc.

Founded in 2001, Cloudmark Inc. offers unparalleled effectiveness in fighting spam, phishing and message-borne viruses. The carrier-grade design of Cloudmark's technology ensures the most rapid message processing with the least demand on network infrastructure. The Cloudmark methodology leverages an optimized combination of automation, human intervention and real-time reporting by millions of trusted and rated users in more than 160 countries. Cloudmark's award-winning solutions are marketed direct and through partners worldwide. A privately held, San Francisco-based company, Cloudmark sits on the board of directors of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, and the steering committee of the Anti-Phishing Working Group. For more information, visit www.cloudmark.com.

 Media contact:  Liza Kurtz Contact via http://www.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=D0654D074B15BD5C 917.602.5979  Brenda Ropoulos Contact via http://www.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=9378CE6AF2A5A2D1 510.414.6772  

SOURCE: Cloudmark, Inc.

Source: MARKET WIRE

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