The state of spam: An interview with Jamie de Guerre, Part 2

Cloudmark CTO gives an update on company's efforts to fight spam

Security Strategies Alert By M. E. Kabay, Network World
March 27, 2008 12:04 AM ET

The long view of security strategies for your network.

What does the future hold for fighting spam? My two-part interview with Jamie de Guerre, CTO of Cloudmark, concludes today.

How do you see Cloudmark evolving? I know that you issue periodic updates to the software - what have you been doing to improve the product?

For e-mail threats, Cloudmark is continuing to innovate. This includes several new road map areas:

1. Cloudmark Sender Reputation
Cloudmark just launched the Cloudmark Sender Reputation Service, a feature shipping on our edge mail transfer agent (MTA) solution, Cloudmark Gateway. This service identifies _sources_ of spam almost instantly around the globe, including rapidly evolving botnets. Cloudmark’s solution traditionally worked at the content layer by filtering messages based on the contents of the message and identifying messages sources in the Cloudmark Global Threat Network as spam, phishing or virus.

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2. Outbound Protection, Zombie Identification and Remediation
Cloudmark will be offering service providers a Zombie Identification Service that identifies and remediates bots within their network.

3. Cloudmark ActiveScan
Cloudmark ActiveScan enables highly efficient rescanning of messages - so that even if a spam message gets through initially, Cloudmark can still take action on it as soon as the spam is discovered.

In addition to these improvements in Cloudmark’s e-mail security solutions, we are expanding into other messaging markets that need the same leading edge security that Cloudmark provides for e-mail. The first of these markets is mobile messaging. In many parts of Asia, people already get more spam on their mobile phone over Short Message Service (SMS) than they do in e-mail. This problem is going to grow elsewhere with the growing popularity of mobile messaging and as mobile-service providers enable new services like mobile e-commerce.

Cloudmark’s solution is flexible in filtering any messaging threat. Therefore, Cloudmark will evolve into other new markets that are also start to have security issues and are increasingly attacked by spammers, phishers and other attackers. Stay tuned - you may hear some announcements in this area soon.

How do you see the battle against bots? Are you focusing on outbound spam?

Yes, as part of Cloudmark’s sender reputation strategy, we are working to identify zombie PCs and providing a real-time Zombie Identification Service to operators as part of our outbound protection offering. We are also partnering with several companies that provide automated remediation solutions and transparent proxy solutions that can filter outbound spam sent on networks that have not closed port 25 (i.e., open spam relays).

What's your long-term view of the spam fighting project? Do we have any hope?

Fundamentally, spam is all about economics. As long as e-mail is one of the most popular applications on the Internet, attackers will be motivated to evade the latest defenses and find ways to monetize the medium. Therefore, Cloudmark believes in creating security solutions that can evolve and respond quickly to these adaptations and design solutions to enable the fastest possible protection.

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, specializes in security and operations management consulting services and teaching. He is Chief Technical Officer of Adaptive Cyber Security Instruments, Inc. and Associate Professor of Information Assurance in the School of Business and Management at Norwich University. Visit his Web site for white papers and course materials.