December 16, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Email security firm Postini (postini.com) said on Thursday that the 2004 spam problem shifted from a content filtering issue to a real time SMTP connection management issue. In 2004, Postini processed 95 billion SMTP requests and blocked over 40 percent of those requests based on the IP address of the sender before the threats could reach corporate firewalls.
r
r
“It’s obvious by the amount of SMTP requests we blocked this year that security at the connection level is the best way for corporations to stop spam and virus threats,” says Scott Petry, founder and senior VP of products and engineering at Postini. “Content filtering by itself is ineffective. As spammers get more sophisticated, customers like to know they are protected at the connection level.”
r
r
Postini reported an increase in directory harvest attacks in 2004, an attempt by spammers to hijack and steal enterprises? email directories to send out spam. Postini says it protected its customers from over 164 million DHAs and blocked over 38 billion invalid delivery attempts.
r
r
The amount of legitimate email dropped from 22 percent to 12 percent while viruses increased from roughly half a percent to one and a half percent, according to Postini’s Email Stat Track. The virus infection average ratio during 2004 was 1 in 67, compared to 2003, when 1 in 200 messages were infected with a virus. Towards the end of the year viruses were infecting 1 in 25 emails.
