Cloudmark Cracks the Genetic Code of Spam Delivering Cloudmark Authority, a Solution that Saves a 10,000 Person Corporation Two Million Dollars a Year
Nov. 18, 2002
Press Release
Cloudmark Inc.
LAS VEGAS. — Nov 18, 2002 — Today at COMDEX Fall 2002, Cloudmark, the company that stops spam before it costs you money, announced the availability of Cloudmark Authority. Unsolicited e-mail or spam is rapidly becoming the silent killer of a business’s most precious resource – its employee’s time. In addition, offensive spam can generate serious corporate liability and headaches for the human resources department and it is a constant drain on the enterprise’s infrastructure. Already, spam comprises nearly one in three corporate messages exchanged this year, according to Radicati Group estimates. Authority cracks the genetic code of spam solving this problem for enterprises by integrating the most popular spam-fighting network – proven since 1998 with a predictive Bayesian engine. Authority’s innovative approach of analyzing spamDNA to fight unsolicited email offers the most effective spam prevention with near-zero false positives and lowest total cost of ownership (TCO). Cloudmark is offering a spam-free guarantee; a 30-day trial for companies to witness the recovery of lost productivity and company resources.
“Fighting spam is an ongoing battle, like fighting cockroaches,” said Joyce Graff, VP and research director at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. “There’s always one more. Just when you think you have control, they change their tactics. The market is searching for a good spam exterminator — a set of tactics that will not only find yesterday’s spam, but will evolve as the game evolves and help to find tomorrow’s spam.”
The DNA of Spam
Spammers mutate message structure to avoid detection just like genes in DNA can be mutated. Just as scientists predict whether someone will have a particular disease by looking for specific gene mutations, Authority predicts whether a message is spam by looking for specific mutations in message structure called spamGenes. Authority uses spamDNA, a collection of spamGenes, to feed its Bayesian classifier which literally learns how to stop spam more effectively. Finally, Cloudmark improves Authority’s effectiveness by constantly evolving the spamDNA it gets from Cloudmark SpamNet, the most popular peer-to-peer, collaborative spam fighting service now with some 200,000 users and the largest database of spam in the world.
“The intrusion of spam has grown from a trickle to a tidal wave over the past few years” said John Patrick, former vice president for Internet Technology at IBM Corporation and chairman of the Global Internet Project. “Spam has risen from a technical irritant to a major issue impacting the morale and productivity of employees of the major enterprises of the world. It is encouraging to see Cloudmark take an innovative and aggressive approach to address the issue.”
“Using spamDNA to predict whether a message is spam is far superior to traditional, reactive techniques like regular expression rules and spamtraps,” said Karl Jacob, CEO of Cloudmark. “Authority delivers proactive and effective spam protection to enterprises while meeting and even exceeding their scalability and TCO needs.”
Cloudmark Delivers on Enterprise Requirements
There are certain technological and purchasing requirements an anti-spam solution must meet to get buy off from the CIO, IT manager and executive decision makers. Cloudmark meets those demanding requirements on all fronts:
- Plugs into existing hardware and software. Authority plugs into existing email hardware and software so it doesn’t interfere with current infrastructure. Authority runs in memory and only impacts the message transfer agent (MTA) by 5-10 percent; other anti-spam products impact the MTA more than 40 percent requiring additional hardware and support.
- Limit dependence on external network resources. Authority operates without a connection to Cloudmark. Other solutions require a constant connection to external servers in order to update their rules every minute and reactively handle new spam.
- Low maintenance due to limited personnel budget. Authority only needs updates every 30-60 days. Other reactive solutions require daily “tweaking” by IT staff to maintain effectiveness
- Integrity of corporate security is maintained. Authority does not compromise security because e-mail never leaves your corporation. Other solutions send data and email outside your corporate firewall.
Near-zero false positives. Authority’s balanced approach uses knowledge about legitimate messages and spam to produce the most accurate results. Other solutions only look for spam. - Fine grain control and flexibility for IT managers. Authority generates a confidence level between 0-100 percent on each spam message. This enables the IT manager to set a site policy that triggers what happens to each message based on how confident Authority is that it’s spam. Other solutions only allow a “spam” or “not spam” determination which generate false positives and force continual detained message review by IT staff or employees. Authority runs on UNIX and Windows.
- Authority learns and adapts to improve itself over time. Cloudmark’s Bayesian Classifier learns from spamDNA generated by SpamNet to constantly improve itself and free up the IT administrators valuable time.
- Proven Return on Investment (ROI). Cloudmark’s spam-free guarantee offers 30 days to witness a ROI before making a commitment. Competitive products require up-front fees or expensive deployment of additional machines.
Pricing and Availability
Cloudmark Authority is available today on Unix, with Windows availability to follow next month. To check out the spam-free guarantee, 30-day trial and witness Authority stopping spam at your gateway, go to www.cloudmark.com. People can also take advantage of Cloudmark’s cost saving calculator on the site. It is estimated that a typical employee will receive ten spam messages per day, which would cost corporations $86 per employee, per year in lost productivity. This means a company with 10,000 employees can save over two million dollars a year with Authority deployed to equal immediate ROI. In addition, Cloudmark Authority protects your company against liability and morale issues generated by unwanted spam, often a more important ROI.
In addition, the beta version of SpamNet, the first, easy-to-use Microsoft® Outlook® add-in that stops spam immediately is available for free from the Cloudmark web site at www.cloudmark.com. Look for new developments on the consumer and enterprise front in the coming months.
About Cloudmark
Cloudmark builds messaging security software that protects communications service provider networks and their subscribers against the widest range of messaging threats. Only Cloudmark Security Platform™ delivers instant security and control across diverse messaging environments, enabling communications service providers to create a safe user experience, protect revenue and safeguard their brand, while streamlining infrastructure and reducing operational costs. Cloudmark’s patented solutions protect more than 120 tier-one customers worldwide, including AT&T, Verizon, Swisscom, Comcast, Cox and NTT.
Cloudmark is a company that stops spam before it costs you money. Cloudmark’s groundbreaking, peer-to-peer (P2P) solution (initially Vipul’s Razor) proven effective at fighting spam since 1998 and now called SpamNet, already delivers immediate spam relief to nearly 200,000 people, processing more than 10 million email messages each day. Cloudmark now leverages this technology to deliver its enterprise solution, called Cloudmark Authority that stops spam at the gateway before it causes lost productivity, saps company resources and creates corporate liability. Authority prevents spam from entering your network by analyzing the DNA of spam to predict whether or not a message is spam and to constantly improve itself. Through Authority and SpamNet, Cloudmark offers the most advanced and innovative methods for countering the accelerating spam problem for both the end-user and Enterprise. The company is leapfrogging traditional anti-spam companies and their obsolete techniques by fighting a distributed problem with a distributed solution and adding predictive technologies to crack the genetic code of spam.
Cloudmark is founded by CTO Jordan Ritter, also co-founder of Napster and Vipul Ved Prakash, Chief Scientist and author of Vipul’s Razor. Karl Jacob is CEO at Cloudmark, a three-time successful entrepreneur and formerly CEO and President of Keen.
For more information about Cloudmark, visit the company’s web site at www.cloudmark.com
For more information, press only, contact:
Tricia Fahey, 415-543-1220, [email][email protected][/email]
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