New York, NY, Infosecurity Trade Show, Booth 114, October 25, 2006 – Leveraging its extensive real-time data about email senders, Commtouch (NASDAQ: CTCH) announced a new service which enables enterprises and service providers to block the majority of undesirable traffic before it enters their networks.
Available through Commtouch OEM partners, the new IP Reputation service offloads the vast majority of spam and email-borne malware at the network perimeter, providing
“Every enterprise and service provider should seriously consider incorporating a reputation service as part of its spam and virus control strategy,” said Richi Jennings, lead analyst for the email security practice at Ferris Research. “Commtouch’s combination of global monitoring together with real time analysis can provide a competitive edge to its licensees.”
Increased Security
By preventing unwelcome email from penetrating the network firewall, the enterprise or service provider’s security is enhanced with an additional layer of protection.
“IP Reputation pulls the mask off of anonymous spam and malware senders, exposing their identity as spammers at the outer edge of the enterprise, long before any of their viruses, worms and trojans can penetrate into the organization,” said Amir Lev, President and CTO of Commtouch.
IT Resource Savings
Without IP Reputation, unwanted email comprises 65% of all email, leading to bloated IT costs. By offloading the bulk of spam at the perimeter, the reduction in internal IT, CPU, storage and bandwidth resources is significant. Fewer email messages overall need to be processed by mail servers, stored for compliance purposes, or filtered for spam or viruses.
“When combined with Sendmail’s proprietary IP connection control technology, Commtouch’s IP Reputation will help significantly reduce the number of unwanted messages our large enterprise and service provider customers receive,” said Kimberly Getgen, Vice President Marketing of Sendmail. “Since the majority of this traffic is blocked at the edge, our customers profit from reduced message processing, and improved IT efficiencies,” said Getgen. Commtouch IP Reputation is available in the new version of Sendmail Flow Control software and the Sentrion Appliance, available later this quarter.
Improved Quality of Service
In the past, some companies have relied on so-called “Real-time Black Lists” or RBLs for their reputation data, however this limited information does not cover the vast majority of email senders that are “gray,” or responsible for sending both legitimate and illegitimate email. By using IP Reputation data, companies can provide “gray IPs” with a slower communication channel, and at the same time provide an open channel for the good, or “white,” IP addresses to ensure rapid delivery.
Real Time Zombie Protection
Commtouch’s global detection centers analyze hundreds of millions of messages per day, providing unique visibility into global email traffic. This critical mass of data is analyzed using patented Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD™) technology, enabling Commtouch to deliver real-time classification for each IP address. This unique aggregation of historical information together with real-time RPD analysis enables Commtouch’s IP Reputation service to react to distributed zombie attacks the moment they start.
Zombies tend to send emails for a short time, in order to evade traditional RBLs that block known bad senders. However with a real-time solution such as Commtouch’s IP Reputation, the zombie computer’s reputation is monitored accurately, and consistently updated according to its current activity. So if a particular IP address is taken over by a zombie and then later cleaned up, the Commtouch IP Reputation Service reflects this status change in an updated classification, so its email would no longer be blocked.
Availability
Commtouch IP Reputation Service, which enables risk-level classification of email traffic sent from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, is currently available for license to networking, messaging and security vendors. Commtouch provides OEM partners with a straightforward API which provides connectivity to the IP Reputation service. For more information, see http://www.commtouch.com/Site/Products/ip_reputation.asp or write to nospam@commtouch.com.
About Commtouch
Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ: CTCH) is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world's most important communications tool -- email. Commtouch has over 15 years of experience developing messaging software and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam and Zero-Hour virus protection solutions. Using core technologies including RPD (Recurrent Pattern Detection™), the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes billions of email messages per month to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by more than 50 OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with over 50 million users in over 100 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Mountain View, CA. For more information, see: www.commtouch.com, including the Commtouch online lab detailing spam statistics and charts.
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including projections about our business, within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. For example, statements in the future tense, and statements including words such as "expect," "plan," "estimate," "anticipate," or "believe" are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on information available to us at the time of the release; we assume no obligation to update any of them. The statements in this release are not guarantees of future performance and actual results could differ materially from our current expectations as a result of numerous factors, including business conditions and growth or deterioration in the Internet market, commerce and the general economy, both domestic as well as international; fewer than expected new-partner relationships; competitive factors, including pricing pressures; technological developments, and products offered by competitors; the ability of our OEM partners to successfully penetrate markets with products integrated with Commtouch technology; a slower than expected acceptance rate for our newer product offerings; availability of qualified staff for expansion; technological difficulties and resource constraints encountered in developing new products; and the failure of Commtouch to meet The Nasdaq Capital Market's listing standards, as well as those risks described in the text of this press release and the company's Annual Reports on Form 20-F and reports on Form 6-K, which are available through www.sec.gov.
Recurrent Pattern Detection, RPD and Zero-Hour are trademarks, and Commtouch is a registered trademark, of Commtouch Software Ltd. U.S. Patent No. 6,330,590 is owned by Commtouch.
Contact:
Rebecca Steinberg Herson
US: +650-864-2112
Int’l: +972-9-863-6877
rebeccah@commtouch.com
