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Companies join Bright Light to tackle spam
SECURITY REPORTS Companies join Bright Light to tackle spam
Don Schutt, vice president of consumer advocacy at Concentric, said he thinks Bright Light is using the right method in the battle against spam. Ed Wehde
Pioneer of anti-spam software and E-mail programs has formed partnerships with a number of leading industry players to combat the growing problem of spam, or unsolicited E-mail.
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So far, 20 Intemet mail service providers, including AT&T Worldnet, Concentric Networks, Earthlink, Excite, Fastnet, FlashNet and Juno Online Services, have joined Bright Light Technologies' Global Probe Network. The Probe Network uses 20 million fake Email addresses to gather E-mail. Because the addresses have no purpose other than to gather unsolicited Email, any E-mail received at them is necessarily spare. The messages are then transmitted in real time to the Bright Light Operations Center (BLOC). Staff at the B L O C use intelligent software to evaluate spam and issue spam filtering rules directly to Spare Wall software located at Bright Mail customer sites. Users can turn the filters on or off. Using this method, Bright Mail defeats many spam a t t a c k s b e f o r e they d a m a g e c o m m u n i c a t i o n infiastructures or enter users' mail boxes, the company said. Spam is a wide-ranging problem that costs ISPs millions of dollars a year in bandwidth, customer service and other manpower resources, according to Bright Light. The Commercial Internet Exchange estimated that more than 30% of Internet outages are spam related and the Associated Press estimated that spam accounts for more than 25 million E-mails per day or roughly 10% of all E-mail worldwide. B e c a u s e spam is such a prevalent problem, a solution needs to be found. " S p a m threatens to u n d e r m i n e the v a l u e o f E - m a i l as a b u s i n e s s communications tool as it overwhelms our mailboxes," said Phil Schater, senior analyst for The Burton Group. "Due to the economic motivation behind most spare, it t e n d s to e v o l v e f a s t e r than c u r r e n t static countermeasures can keep pace. The industry needs to treat this problem like the mutating virus that it is."
"Existing anti-spam products aren't effective because they are labour intensive and reactionary," Schutt said. "Spammers continually try to bypass our efforts and our internal people are fighting to learn what they are up to and how to combat them. Bright Mail is the first legitimate application we've seen that b e c o m e s s m a r t e r and s m a r t e r as the spammer gets more sophisticated. We think that Bright Mail will solve the spam problem for our customers." In a d d i t i o n to a n n o u n c i n g its G l o b a l P r o b e Network, Bright Light also announced two other alliances this week. Bright Light has entered a contractual agreement with Netscape to enable its anti-spare service to be fully integrated into Netscape messaging solutions for Unix and Windows NT. Netscape's sales force and authorized resellers will offer the solution as a preferred option for Netscape's customers. The antispam service will be available for Netscape in the third quarter of this year. According to Sunil Paul, CEO and founder of Bright Light, Netscape's extensive sales force will make his company's service available to more ISPs and businesses. "That's a major step forward for us," Paul said. "It allows us to d e p l o y the service into many more corporations than would have been possible for us." Bright Light also announced that its service would be available for users of Software.com's InterMail. The service will be offered as an option to InterMail customers through Software.com's sales force by the second quarter of this year. The integration of the Bright Mail Anti-Spam Service and InterMail will benefit lnterMail-enabled service providers interested in o f f e r i n g the best available anti-spam solution to their subscribers, according to Bright Light.
Computer Fraud & Security June 1999 3723/991520.00 © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Don Schutt, vice president of consumer advocacy at Concentric, said he thinks Bright Light is using the right method in the battle against spam. Ed Wehde
Pioneer of anti-spam software and E-mail programs has formed partnerships with a number of leading industry players to combat the growing problem of spam, or unsolicited E-mail.
A
So far, 20 Intemet mail service providers, including AT&T Worldnet, Concentric Networks, Earthlink, Excite, Fastnet, FlashNet and Juno Online Services, have joined Bright Light Technologies' Global Probe Network. The Probe Network uses 20 million fake Email addresses to gather E-mail. Because the addresses have no purpose other than to gather unsolicited Email, any E-mail received at them is necessarily spare. The messages are then transmitted in real time to the Bright Light Operations Center (BLOC). Staff at the B L O C use intelligent software to evaluate spam and issue spam filtering rules directly to Spare Wall software located at Bright Mail customer sites. Users can turn the filters on or off. Using this method, Bright Mail defeats many spam a t t a c k s b e f o r e they d a m a g e c o m m u n i c a t i o n infiastructures or enter users' mail boxes, the company said. Spam is a wide-ranging problem that costs ISPs millions of dollars a year in bandwidth, customer service and other manpower resources, according to Bright Light. The Commercial Internet Exchange estimated that more than 30% of Internet outages are spam related and the Associated Press estimated that spam accounts for more than 25 million E-mails per day or roughly 10% of all E-mail worldwide. B e c a u s e spam is such a prevalent problem, a solution needs to be found. " S p a m threatens to u n d e r m i n e the v a l u e o f E - m a i l as a b u s i n e s s communications tool as it overwhelms our mailboxes," said Phil Schater, senior analyst for The Burton Group. "Due to the economic motivation behind most spare, it t e n d s to e v o l v e f a s t e r than c u r r e n t static countermeasures can keep pace. The industry needs to treat this problem like the mutating virus that it is."
"Existing anti-spam products aren't effective because they are labour intensive and reactionary," Schutt said. "Spammers continually try to bypass our efforts and our internal people are fighting to learn what they are up to and how to combat them. Bright Mail is the first legitimate application we've seen that b e c o m e s s m a r t e r and s m a r t e r as the spammer gets more sophisticated. We think that Bright Mail will solve the spam problem for our customers." In a d d i t i o n to a n n o u n c i n g its G l o b a l P r o b e Network, Bright Light also announced two other alliances this week. Bright Light has entered a contractual agreement with Netscape to enable its anti-spare service to be fully integrated into Netscape messaging solutions for Unix and Windows NT. Netscape's sales force and authorized resellers will offer the solution as a preferred option for Netscape's customers. The antispam service will be available for Netscape in the third quarter of this year. According to Sunil Paul, CEO and founder of Bright Light, Netscape's extensive sales force will make his company's service available to more ISPs and businesses. "That's a major step forward for us," Paul said. "It allows us to d e p l o y the service into many more corporations than would have been possible for us." Bright Light also announced that its service would be available for users of Software.com's InterMail. The service will be offered as an option to InterMail customers through Software.com's sales force by the second quarter of this year. The integration of the Bright Mail Anti-Spam Service and InterMail will benefit lnterMail-enabled service providers interested in o f f e r i n g the best available anti-spam solution to their subscribers, according to Bright Light.
Computer Fraud & Security June 1999 3723/991520.00 © 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved