Secure Computing Wages War Against Image Spam
Posted on: Tuesday, 31 October 2006, 09:00 CST
SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Secure Computing Corporation , a leader in enterprise gateway security, today announced it is waging war against image spam, where spammers hide messages in image files to escape detection. Over the past few months, Secure Computing Research has identified a 200-percent increase in the amount of image spam, which today accounts for 30 percent of all spam and approximately one in every four messages circulating on the Internet.
A Real Menace to Corporations
"Image-based spam is a particularly difficult problem for a couple of reasons," noted Michael Osterman, founder and principal of Osterman Research. "It is much harder to detect with conventional spam-filtering and blocking technologies. Further, it is typically much larger than normal text-based spam, consuming much more bandwidth and storage."
"Traditional anti-spam software depends on content filtering techniques such as keyword filtering and Bayesian analysis to detect spam. Even the technology used to recognize characters from images, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), is not effective on today's image spam," said Dr. Paul Judge, chief technology officer of Secure Computing. "Spammers are using advanced mathematical and graphical techniques like random modification of image pixels and dynamic construction of images from multiple components to bypass spam filtering tools."
Secure Computing's TrustedSource(TM) Stops Image Spam
Organizations cannot afford to depend solely on localized protection using algorithms that quickly become obsolete and cannot accurately filter new threats like image spam. Secure Computing has evolved its TrustedSource engine over the years to dynamically detect and block traffic from illegitimate sources using a global reputation approach. TrustedSource collects information on email senders and the types of email they generate by accumulating data from more than 7000 sensors located in 48 countries. As it gets more data, the breadth and depth of the TrustedSource database increases, accurately categorizing sender reputations for multiple identities including IP, domain and URL reputations. This approach has proven effective to proactively delete image spam before it hits the corporate mail server.
Baptist Health Systems has long depended on Secure Computing's IronMail with TrustedSource to battle messaging threats such as image spam to keep productivity levels from becoming significantly reduced.
"Baptist Health Systems has been working with Secure Computing's solutions for quite some time and has been battling spam of all forms using the TrustedSource technology," said Phillip Moses, exchange messaging engineer at Baptist Health Systems. "As spammers changed their methods, we, like the rest of the world, saw an increase in image spam, and recent trends show the problem is only going to get worse. Fortunately, our use of IronMail with TrustedSource has helped us to battle against this increase and we will continue to look to Secure Computing to help us fight image spam."
To learn more about image spam and other spammer techniques, go to http://www.securecomputing.com/ to view our online resource center.
About Secure Computing
Secure Computing , a leading provider of enterprise gateway security, delivers a comprehensive set of solutions that help customers protect their critical Web, email and network assets. Over half the Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 are part of our more than 19,000 global customers in 106 countries, supported by a worldwide network of more than 1,900 partners. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information, see http://www.securecomputing.com/
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding TrustedSource's ability to detect and stop spam, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are the manner in which a systems administrator configures the product, technical difficulties, delays in product development, undetected software errors or bugs, competitive pressures, and the risk factors detailed from time to time in Secure Computing's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Editorial Contact: Secure Computing Merritt Group Brenda Christensen Kelly Indrieri 925-288-4165 703-390-1530 brenda_christensen@securecomputing.com indrieri@merritgrp.com (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060808/LATU027LOGO )
Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060808/LATU027LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Secure Computing Corporation
CONTACT: Brenda Christensen of Secure Computing Corporation,+1-925-288-4165, brenda_christensen@securecomputing.com; or Kelly Indrieri ofMerritt Group, +1-703-390-1530, indrieri@merritgrp.com, for Secure ComputingCorporation
Web site: http://www.securecomputing.com/
Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall
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