CipherTrust introduces TrustedSource 3.0 – The Most Precise Reputation System To Slay Zombie Networks

January 31, 2005 – CipherTrust, Inc., the leader in messaging security, today announced TrustedSource(tm) 3.0, which reinforces an organisation’s email security by providing the most precise sender reputation scoring available. The additional capabilities of TrustedSource 3.0 build on CipherTrust’s unparalleled accuracy and effectiveness, further strengthening the performance of the award-winning IronMail appliance. TrustedSource 3.0 is powered by CipherTrust’s global customer network, the largest enterprise email security network in the world.

As a result of research into data collected from more than 1400 customers protected by IronMail, TrustedSource utilises real-time data on enterprise email traffic. The Message Profiler, technology at the heart of every IronMail appliance, examines each message and provides a highly accurate threat score based on deep message inspection and scoring techniques. The combination of these technologies produces the most complete and precise reputation system ever built.

Brian Burke, Research Manager for IDC’s Security Products service, said: “By examining and scoring every message seen by the broadest enterprise email security network in the world, TrustedSource allows CipherTrust to leverage its leadership in an innovative way. Precisely assessing sender reputation is an important component of the next generation of messaging security solutions.”

Guilty until Proven Innocent

TrustedSource continually tracks and provides reputation scores for the approximately 50 million IP addresses that send email frequently to enterprise recipients within CipherTrust’s global customer network. By identifying the IP addresses that regularly communicate with enterprises, CipherTrust research was able to focus on the senders that have not been regular communication partners in the past. What they found is that 30 per cent of the average enterprise’s message flow is from senders that rarely, if ever, send email. CipherTrust has determined with a distinctly high probability that these unknown senders are likely “zombie” machines that have been taken over by hackers to send spam, viruses, phishing scams and other unwanted messages. Every hour, over 18,000 new zombies are detected by TrustedSource.

By applying this principle, TrustedSource 3.0 provides a reputation for every sender, regardless of whether IronMail has encountered the sender before or not. These new senders are “guilty until proven innocent,” forcing a new IP address to demonstrate good behaviour to earn a positive reputation score. This, in effect, slays the zombie networks by blocking messages from likely compromised machines.

Key to maintaining IronMail’s market leading accuracy and effectiveness in blocking bad messages is CipherTrust’s patented Message Profiler. The Message Profiler technology tests thousands of message characteristics and utilises TrustedSource data to determine the threat presented by each message. Message Profiler does not depend on any one characteristic to assess a message, so the risk of “false positives” (rejection of legitimate e-mail) is miniscule, even with new senders.

Constant Feedback and Still No “Pay to Play”

Unlike competing reputation systems that do not use customer data to derive reputation scores, TrustedSource constantly tunes sender reputation based upon actual results from the field. This feedback system ensures that each sender’s reputation is accurate and timely, a critical requirement given the dynamic nature of today’s email threats. Furthermore, there is no way to bypass TrustedSource by buying a bond to get onto a “safe” sender list and bypassing security defences. CipherTrust maintains that good sender reputation is earned, not bought.

Dr. Paul Judge, chief technology officer at CipherTrust, said: “Based on our research, the behaviour of IP addresses and TrustedSource’s feedback mechanism, which leverages information from the largest enterprise email network in the world, our reputation system is far more precise when assessing the legitimacy of each sender. Now, with the work we’ve done in analysing the behaviour of new email senders, we’re able to derive reputation scores for all of the 4.2 billion IP addresses that could potentially send email. The result is more accurate and effective email threat handling for our customers, whether they have seen the sender before or not.”

TrustedSource 3.0 is available immediately and is already in use by existing IronMail installations.

About CipherTrust, Inc.
CipherTrust, Inc. is the leader in messaging security. Recognised as the market leader by IDC, the Company’s award-winning IronMail appliance protects the messaging systems of more enterprise e-mail users than any other solution, including more than 30 percent of the Fortune 100. CipherTrust pioneered messaging security by uniquely combining the five critical e-mail security components of spam and fraud prevention, virus and worm protection, policy and content compliance, e-mail privacy, and intrusion prevention into a single easy to deploy and manage platform. The Company is backed by top tier investors including Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners. For more information about CipherTrust, please visit www.ciphertrust.com .