Antispam tools multiplying like spam

As spam continues to roll over corporate networks in ever-larger quantities, the cavalry of vendors offering defenses continues to grow as well.

No fewer than five vendors are shipping or are about to release new products designed to keep spam from polluting corporate e-mail systems.

This week, MailFrontier plans to release a gateway product and upgrades to its client software at the Demo 2003 conference, which is being held in Scottsdale, Ariz., and run by IDG Executive Forums, a division of Network World.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

As spam continues to roll over corporate networks in ever-larger quantities, the cavalry of vendors offering defenses continues to grow as well.

No fewer than five vendors are shipping or are about to release new products designed to keep spam from polluting corporate e-mail systems.

This week, MailFrontier plans to release a gateway product and upgrades to its client software at the Demo 2003 conference, which is being held in Scottsdale, Ariz., and run by IDG Executive Forums, a division of Network World.

Also this week, Sunbelt Software will unveil the server edition of its IHateSpam filtering software.

Singlefin last week introduced its Local Messaging Switch, a corporate gateway spam filter.

Stealth start-up Q-Spam will announce its new name and product in March, and TumbleWeed in April is expected to release a new spam module for its SecureMail product.

The spate of products not only highlight the options that companies have for building perimeter defenses against spam, but also reinforces the commonly held notion that spammers remain a step ahead. Spam blocker Postini reports that it filtered more than 600 million spam messages in the last 30 days, more than a 50% jump from just five months ago.

"The problem is that the spammers can react faster than the guys providing tools against it," says Dan Keldsen, senior analyst at Delphi Group. However, he says the tools are becoming more sophisticated.

Many companies are offering multiple levels of filtering, including so-called blacklists and whitelists, and content filtering, that aggregate their results into a evaluation. Other tools streamline administration, such as adding automated updating services much like antivirus software.

MailFrontier's Anti-Spam Gateway includes five spam-filtering techniques, including dynamic whitelists, which are built automatically with a user's contacts and existing e-mail threads. The gateway also is updated automatically with known spam thumbprints collected from MailFrontier users.

Sunbelt is releasing its first server-based product, which is designed for Microsoft Exchange. The server uses a scoring system to weed out spam from legitimate mail and is policy-driven so filtering can be tuned per user. Sunbelt also taps the 40,000 users of its client software to profile spam and create filter updates for the server.

Singlefin's Local Messaging Switch, which uses a three-layer evaluation process, is an outgrowth of its hosted service for spam blocking and content filtering. Companies run the switch locally and have a Web-based interface to set policies, but Singlefin administers the server remotely and offers its hosted network as a backup.

In the coming months, Q-Spam's co-founders Linus Upson and Felix Lin will introduce a spam product they say borrows heavily from the mobile software synchronization technology they developed at their previous company, AvantGo.

And TumbleWeed is expected to deliver in April its Dynamic Anti-Spam module that plugs into its SecureMail 5.5. The service will offer automatic updates of heuristic techniques, and rules and patterns for identifying spam.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.