Trend Micro Introduces Enterprise Spam Prevention Service to Stop Unsolicited Email at the Internet Gateway
Network Antivirus Pioneer Delivers Integrated Gateway Service to Tackle Growing Spam Threats
Cupertino, CA – March 03, 2003 — Trend Micro, Inc. (TSE: 4704, NASDAQ: TMIC), a leader in network antivirus and Internet content security software and services, today announced the introduction of its Trend Micro(tm) Spam Prevention Service for enterprise networks. The service is designed to block non-productive and malicious spam at the Internet gateway and interoperates seamlessly with the company’s other antivirus and content security products. Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service provides another level of spam protection, working with Trend Micro eManager(tm), a content filtering application, to ensure the highest level of spam prevention.
Gartner analysts predict that left unchecked, spam will comprise over 50% of corporate email by 2004. Spamming has become relatively easy since email protocols are easier to forge, user addresses are simple to harvest, and there is virtually no cost involved with sending out spam. Additionally, spammers are devising new ways to fool classic detection methods, which are based on key words or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) identifiers. As a result, organizations face the increased waste of resources like email storage space, network bandwidth, and man-hours used to identify and deal with unwelcome emails, as well as the increased potential of malware or computer viruses being introduced into their networks inside of spam. According to the Ferris Group, in 2003, corporations will occur $10 billion in costs related to spam.
In response to the need for anti-spam tools to handle this increased threat, Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service offers customers a flexible defense system against the constantly changing landscape of spam, giving customers anti-spam rules which are frequently adapted to provide effective protection against the latest spam threats. The service leverages gateway scanning software to block non-productive and malicious spam before it enters the network.
“Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service is a very effective anti-spam product,” said the IT Messaging Manager of a large Hollywood film studio. “We’re evaluating the Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service, and it catches almost all of our incoming junk email. We were surprised at the volume of spam flooding our end-users, and are excited to be able to monitor and manage it.”
This Trend Micro service is based on heuristic technology anti-spam filtering rules provided by Postini, Inc., a leading email security service provider, who analyzes nearly 50 million messages a day for enterprise clients worldwide. Heuristic technology is the science of calculating the probability that a particular message is spam based on the collective occurrence of a set of characteristics of the message. This technology adds an additional adaptive layer of detection to the commonly deployed “black list” or signature-based scanning provided by most enterprise anti-spam vendors, including Trend Micro. While signature-based scanning can be updated to block known sources of spam, heuristics-based scanning can be quickly adapted to detect entirely new categories or methods of spamming. Based on the daily analysis of millions of real-world emails by Postini, Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service delivers finely tuned and constantly adjusted heuristic engine files to ensure customers have the latest means of capturing the most elusive spam threats.
Once a message is defined as spam, Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service enables IT security administrators to take pre-defined actions, such as tagging, delivering or re-routing the message. IT security administrators can also configure spam prevention sensitivity in five categories: hate mail, get-rich-quick solicitations, messages containing sexual content, bulk mail, or commercial spam. This level of user-configuration allows customers to apply the level of granularity to spam detection that they need, while offering the most optimal performance possible based on these user-defined filtering rules. Beta test results suggest that Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service can potentially block 90-95% or more of spam, with a very low occurrence of incorrectly identifying messages as spam.
“We developed this anti-spam solution because we believe that the most effective place to implement anti-spam policy is the same as it is for viruses and other malicious code – at the Internet gateway,” said David Rowe, Executive Vice President of Global Marketing for Trend Micro. “In addition, we see spam techniques evolving at such a rapid pace that we are delivering this additional, extremely effective technology solution that can adapt quickly as threats emerge. Our goal with this service is to do what Trend Micro has always done best; provide the most effective, high performance content security solutions at the gateway. ”
Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service is the latest service offering to be added to Trend Micro’s Enterprise Protection Strategy (EPS), an industry-unique approach that addresses mixed-threat attacks by delivering threat-specific prevention, detection and repair instructions in real-time to multiple Trend Micro products. The integration of this service into EPS will enable IT security administrators to centrally manage this service along with other Trend Micro products and services, deploy security policies from a central location throughout an enterprise network, and benefit from consolidated reporting on policy actions as well as spam, virus, or other malicious code events.
For maximum anti-spam protection, customers are encouraged to implement Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service at the SMTP mail stream alongside other Trend Micro products like InterScan(tm) VirusWall(tm), InterScan(tm) Messaging Security Suite, ScanMail(tm) for Microsoft(tm) Exchange(tm) or ScanMail for Lotus Notes(tm), and ScanMail eManager.
Availability and Pricing
Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service for Sun(tm) Solaris(tm) is available immediately.
Trend Micro Spam Prevention Service for Microsoft(tm) Windows(tm) and Linux(tm) will be available in Q2 2003. Pricing begins at $30 per user per year for 25 users, with volume discounts available for higher numbers of users. The service is currently offered in an English language interface, however many of the heuristic engine’s rules are not language-dependent. For more information please visit www.trendmicro.com, or call the Trend Micro customer service center at 888-58-TREND (North America only).
About Trend Micro
Trend Micro is a leader in network antivirus and Internet content security software and services. The Tokyo-based corporation has business units worldwide. Trend Micro products are sold through corporate and value-added resellers and managed service providers. For additional information and evaluation copies of all Trend Micro products, visit www.trendmicro.com.
Trend Micro, the t-ball logo, InterScan, VirusWall, ScanMail, and eManager are trademarks or registered trademarks of Trend Micro Incorporated. All other company or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their owners.
Trend Micro will host a conference call and webcast demo Monday, March 3 at 9 a.m. PT to introduce its new spam solution. To register for the press conference, go to this link: https://trendmicro.webex.com/trendmicro/j.php?ED=76697276&UID=7477952