Clearswift upgrades MIMEsweeper for e-mail security

Clearswift on Tuesday announced an upgrade to its MIMEsweeper for SMTP gateway software that includes new message tracking features and protects against e-mail address spoofing and directory harvest attacks.

MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.2, available now, features enhanced message tracking that consolidates statistics about e-mails, instead of simply providing transaction-level details, according to company officials. Organizations can then store or export messages and run reports based on this information.

Using the new receiver service address validation feature in version 5.2, organizations can use LDAP address lists to describe the valid e-mail addresses within the organization, officials say. Version 5.2 also protect against an organization having its e-mail addresses hijacked, or “spoofed,” and from directory harvest attacks, according to Clearswift.

In such attacks, spammers attempt to discover the valid e-mail addresses associated with an e-mail server by bombarding the server with any combination of potential e-mail user names, and learning that those from which a “not found” message was not received are indeed valid.

MIMEsweeper for SMTP 5.2 is priced based on the number of users. For example, the software costs $8,030 for an organization with 500 users. Support would cost an additional $2,008 per year.

The features of MIMEsweeper software are also available from Clearswift as a hardened appliance or managed service.