The vital role of R & D

WE ARE ALL TOO FAMILIAR with spam - unsolicited commercial email that feeds off the unique power of the Internet to connect hundreds of millions of computer users around the world, at virtually no cost.

Sent with fraudulent intent, spam is more than a nuisance and distraction; it is a drain on productivity and an increasingly costly waste of time and resources for ISPs and for businesses large and small. It also clogs corporate networks and is sometimes a vehicle for viruses that can cause serious damage. And as everyone struggles to sift spam out of their inboxes, valid messages are sometimes overlooked or deleted, impacting on the value of email as a channel for communication and legitimate e-commerce.

Every week, countless articles are generated warning the individual and the business world that spam (and viruses) continues to rise unabated.
Hard to believe that Bill Gates predicted, in early 2004, the end of spam within two years!

As a managed service provider, MailGuard hangs its hat on delivering proven value to its customers who embrace the anti-spam solution in the comfort that it will all be taken care of for them 'in the background'.
For the past six years, MailGuard has worked with businesses to stay ahead of the spammers who untiringly take advantage of new spam distribution techniques.

The endless quest
Our most recent R&D efforts and new multi-layered filtering rules have delivered outstanding results in reducing the influx of image-based spam (one third of spam is image based today) in our customers' mail boxes.

Researching how image-based spam gets through filters and working steadily on how to positively identify this particular type of spam, MailGuard re-engineered its filtering systems and network to delete image-based spam from customers' emails before they reached their networks.

The task proved very challenging because all of the 'spammy' attributes were encapsulated within the image. After ongoing analysis and having tested a range of technologies utilising Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to 'read' the image (as a human would), and pick up the obviously spammy contents, we found a solution that, today, removes 99 percent of all image-based spam.

An additional win is the solution's ability to 'remember' a previously identified spam-image and automatically apply its previous score - resulting in an instant quarantine.

Reducing the numbers of quarantined email
It's all well and good to have your spam quarantined for you. But does an organisation want to sift through hundreds or thousands of quarantined emails daily just to make sure that a genuine email has somehow been able to slip into the quarantined world?

The R&D team spent weeks rigorously testing an evolution of its traditional anti-spam and anti-virus defences and progressively fine-tuned its front-line defence mechanisms, as a result of ongoing analysis of spammers and virus writers' tactics and methodologies. This enhancement works by analysing not the email messages that are sent by spammers, but the spammers' sources themselves. In this way, MailGuard is able to accurately distinguish between a legitimate email server and a spammer, and combined with our more traditional spam filters provide 99.96 percent accuracy in identifying spam.

The heuristic way - machine-learning
Machine learning - systems that learn from data and grow smarter over time - is vital to the fight against spam because every defensive action causes spammers to change their attack. For our technology to be effective, we must continuously adapt - without the need for a team of people to examine messages one by one!

A smart filter can also be customised to suit the preferences of an individual user. Smart filters can learn from a user's personal preferences to create a unique, anti-spam immune system that is much harder for spammers to work around.

Additionally, we have assembled a growing database of spam, collected from volunteer contributions from our customers. This database proves invaluable as we continue to develop smarter filters that access the database to recognise and block spam more effectively.

When genuine industry self-regulation, effective and appropriate legislation and targeted enforcement against the most sinister spammers are all working together, the incentives for spamming will lose much of its appeal.

Resellers must have an anti-spam, anti-virus offering.

Security is the hottest topic in today's IT market. Today's channel is typically armed with multiple security offerings of which an anti-spam, anti-virus solution must be included.

We mentioned at the start the surprising rise and penetration of spam in the first quarter of this year. Additionally, it also appears that small and medium-sized businesses are taking the brunt of this unsolicited email barrage, not because smaller businesses are being targeted but rather larger enterprises have invested more resources and technology to ward off the spam assault.

Our own research has revealed the willingness of these businesses to talk through their spam issues and the detrimental impact on the business and its employees. Our managed service means that within two days a partner's customer will have a 99.96 percent reduction in their spam without having to implement any hardware, software or updating by IT staff over time. For example; MailGuard technology utilises a sophisticated triple anti-virus and anti-spam solution which is automatically updated every five minutes.

For many businesses which have a small team of busy IT people - or even no dedicated IT people - letting a professional take care of spam and virus issues is a huge relief and, ultimately, delivers productivity gains for the organisation.

The continued expansion of MailGuard's partner community, equipped with the necessary knowledge and tools, allows resellers to participate and share in MailGuard's market growth. The door is open for these organisations to speak confidently and with authority in assisting their customers to find a solution.

How do spammers harvest email addresses?

Mailing lists: Spammers regularly attempt to get the lists of subscribers to mailing lists.
Domain contact points: Every domain has one to four contact points that include email addresses.
By guessing & cleaning: Spammers guess email addresses, and send a test message to a list which includes the guessed addresses. They wait for either an error message or for a confirmation.
White & Yellow pages: There are various sites that serve as White Pages, Yellow Pages now has an email directory on the web.
Using social engineering: The spammer uses a hoax to convince people into giving him valid email addresses. A good example is Richard Douche's 'Free CDs' chain letter. The letter promises free CDs.
From the address book and emails on other people's computers: Some viruses and worms spread by emailing themselves to all the email addresses they can find in the email address book.