Press Release - For Immediate Release

First, Biggest, Best—IronPort® Systems Celebrates Third Anniversary of SenderBase Email Sender Reputation Database

The World's First and Largest Email Reputation Database Continues to Dominate the Industry with One Trillion Spam Messages Blocked to Date

SAN BRUNO, Calif. - January 04, 2006 -IronPort Systems Inc., the price performance leader in email security, today announced the three-year anniversary of the IronPort SenderBase® Network. The SenderBase Network is the world's first, and remains the world's largest, email reputation database. It collects data from more than 100,000 participating networks, ten times more than any other reputation database, and receives over 5 billion queries daily. The SenderBase Network captures data from ISPs and corporations in every corner of the globe, providing a large and diverse sample of Internet traffic patterns. This unique view into the world's email enables IronPort to immediately protect SenderBase users from new threats while stopping distributed, low-volume attacks that go undetected by other reputation databases.

SenderBase is used as a "credit report" for email senders, providing comprehensive data and a reputation score that ISPs and companies can use to differentiate legitimate senders from spammers and other attackers. Since IronPort launched SenderBase in January 2003, many other vendors have followed. But the key to effectively tracking email and applying reputation lies in the quantity, quality, and breadth of data in the underlying database. It is not just the sheer volume of data that makes SenderBase unique, but also the diversity of sender attributes tracked. SenderBase now tracks nearly 100 email traffic related parameters, more than ten times the number of parameters tracked in other reputation databases.

IronPort 80%, Others 35%

"The breadth and quality of SenderBase data allows IronPort to accurately assign reputation, giving customers the ability to block up to 80% of spam at the connection level. Competitors are typically claiming to block 35% - 50%," said Tom Gillis, senior vice president, worldwide marketing, IronPort Systems. "Simply put, this translates into bandwidth savings, reduced system resource requirements, greater security and increased productivity."

"A typical enterprise receiving 100,000 legitimate messages a day will need to accept and process nearly 1 million incoming messages before weeding out the spam from the legitimate mail," Gillis continued. "Knowing a sender's reputation allows a user to reject unwanted mail before it is even delivered. It's like using caller ID to screen incoming calls. It saves a lot of spam headaches."

10 Times More Data and Rich Analysis Provide the Most Accurate Reputation

SenderBase collects data from more than 100,000 participating networks. These networks include the largest ISPs in the world such as China Telecom, Tiscali in Europe, 8 of the 10 largest ISPs in North America and a wide array of large and small enterprises, distributed globally. SenderBase captures the broadest set of data for any given sender, nearly 100 different parameters in all, including:

  • global volume of mail being sent
  • whether the sender accepts mail in return
  • the country of origin
  • sending history
  • complaint data
  • age and usage patterns of a sending IP address
  • associated domains

IronPort has more than three years of operational experience managing data quality and integrity. IronPort developed the Data Quality Engine to assess the quality of a given data feed by cross-correlating multiple data streams with known references or benchmarks. This system allows SenderBase to properly weight the data according to quality.

"In creating SenderBase, IronPort was the first email product company to recognize and embrace the value of reputation information," said Peter Christy, co-founder of Internet Research Group. "IronPort has used its first mover position and refined SenderBase to provide accurate, granular, and timely data to help detect and mitigate zombie computers, virus outbreaks, and phishing attacks and contribute great value to messaging protection systems."

Blocking More Data than 1000 Library of Congresses

"Since its inception, SenderBase has been serving IronPort customers and the Internet community, allowing them to block and throttle senders of mail based on reputation," commented Patrick Peterson, vice president of technology at IronPort Systems. "The amount of data in the one trillion emails blocked by SenderBase is equivalent to 1000 times the printed data in the US Library of Congress."

About IronPort Systems

IronPort Systems is the leading email security provider for organizations ranging from small businesses to the Global 2000. The company has developed a family of email security appliances, the IronPort C-Series™, that offer breakthrough performance, unprecedented ease of use, and reduced total cost of ownership. IronPort is driving new standards and providing innovative products for those faced with the monumental task of managing, protecting, and growing mission-critical email systems. For more information on IronPort products and services, visit: http://www.ironport.com.

Press / Analysts

If you are a reporter or analyst and want more information on IronPort Systems please contact:
DAVID ORO, IRONPORT SYSTEMS, 415.885.9898 MOBILE, DTO@THROROGROUP.COM
SUZANNE MATICK, IRONPORT SYSTEMS, SUZANNE@MATICK.COM