Taking the spam fight beyond message deflection

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The war against spam is a larger effort than just defending the inbox. Tools from AppRiver, Habeas, and OmniTI debuting at the InBox:IT 2005 conference this week aim to combat spam by protecting legitimate e-mail message senders as well as the enterprise recipients.

AppRiver at the show unveiled SecureTide, a managed service for e-mail content control, and spam and virus protection. The offering is an update to the company's existing spam filtering platform. The SecureTide service combines a spam detection system with more than 60 types of filtering techniques, anti-virus engines, perimeter security, and e-mail content management features. SecureTide's Web-based content tools bolster security and compliance by allowing words and phrases to be tracked in all addresses, headers, subject lines, and message bodies.

SecureTide offers wave-front protection, according to AppRiver co-founder and CTO Joel Smith.

"There is a statistical wave when something repeats. [With SecureTide] we can see a spam campaign or virus start in a two or three minute period," Smith said.

Another feature is LDAP Mirroring, which automatically updates e-mail server address changes.

Habeas, a company that aims to conquer spam by supporting senders of legitimate e-mail, at the conference introduced Email Monitor, a diagnostic tool that helps businesses better understand their e-mail infrastructure and rates of delivery for sent e-mail messages.

Email Monitor gives message senders a real-time view of their messaging environment, providing information about delivery rates to inboxes and bulk folders as well as about a sender's e-mail reputation.

Many legitimate businesses that use e-mail to communicate with customers and partners are finding their messages caught in spam filters, according to Des Cahill, CEO of Habeas.

The tool's Delivery Monitor feature informs senders whether their messages pass through spam-filtering systems unblocked or whether they’re sent to junk or bulk mail folders. Delivery Monitor also can send e-mail alerts that summarize recent e-mail campaign activity and provide instant notification of a drop in delivery rates.

A Reputation Monitor feature assess a company's e-mail reputation by monitoring sender IP addresses and domains in the most common blacklists. If a sender is added to a blacklist, the Reputation Monitor notifies the sender.

Habeas also offers Habeas Certify, a sender accreditation program that certifies legitimate e-mail senders. To prevent spammers from using this technology, Habeas has a rigorous certification process for its sender validation program, Cahill said.

"We will run a 50-point check, a credit history about domains and IP addresses, and will interview them to understand their list and business," Cahill said.

OmniTI Computer Consulting at the show rolled out an updated version of its e-mail application server called Ecelerity 2.0. The product is an e-mail engine designed to optimize existing ISP and enterprise messaging infrastructure by providing additional security, management, and performance features for inbound and outbound message flows.

Version 2.0 of Ecelerity includes new spam throttling technology that monitors e-mail traffic and dynamically slows connection throughput based on message integrity. Another enhancement is the ability for corporate users to define personal e-mail policies such as a customized white and black list. Version 2.0 also gains clustering, an enterprise console for monitoring traffic from multiple servers and new alerting tools.