Tumbleweed Bolsters Email Security Products with Addition of Outbreak Detection
MailGate Email Security Solutions Now Provide Zero Hour Protection Against Spam, Phishing, Email Viruses and Worm Outbreaks
Redwood City, CA — May
23, 2005 — Tumbleweed® Communications
Corp. (NASDAQ:TMWD), a leading provider of e-mail and file transfer
security solutions , announced today that it has extended its
comprehensive, industry leading MailGate email security suite
with Recurrent Pattern Detection™ technology to enable
Outbreak Detection as a new layer of defense against breaking
spam, phishing, spyware, virus and worm attacks sent out in email
blasts.
As reported in the most recent Dark Traffic Report issued
by Tumbleweed Communications’ Message Protection Lab,
valid email now comprises less than 5-10% of all inbound
enterprise message traffic. With the volume and complexity
of malicious traffic growing all the time, multi-layer multi-technology
approaches have proven to be the most successful at stopping
the widest range of known and unknown email threats. The
addition of Outbreak Detection to the Tumbleweed MailGate
products provides customers with the most effective, complete
approach to inbound email security.
Tumbleweed’s MailGate suite provides the comprehensive,
multi-tiered security framework required to deliver comprehensive
protection from inbound email threats:
- Preventive Defense – These technologies
block invalid email traffic in real time using network-level
SMTP analysis and traffic shaping, before a message is
accepted into the enterprise network. Threats stopped include
Dark Traffic, spoofed messages, and invalid recipients.
This kind of analysis is generally deployed at the network
edge, and can drop anywhere from 50% to 95% of incoming
email traffic as junk.
- Reactive Defense – Once a message
is determined to be valid, and is accepted into the enterprise
network, Tumbleweed email security applies a number of
reactive technologies to block previously identified threats.
These include heuristic rules, content signatures, lexical
analysis, DNS block lists, and sender reputation service
approaches. This layer of defense is used to block traditional
spam, phishing, spyware, virus, and worm attacks, with
extremely high capture rates and very low false positives.
The challenge with this approach is that new, innovative
threats that have not yet been analyzed can slip past this
layer of defense, which is why a Proactive Defense layer
is crucial.
- Proactive Defense – Proactive
technologies complement Reactive approaches by identifying
new, emergent email threats in real time, providing true
Zero Hour defense. This type of analysis provides near
real-time protection against spam, phishing, and virus
outbreaks. This approach is particularly strong at defending
against zombie attacks sent from hijacked personal computers,
which are virtually impossible for traditional sender reputation
services to identify. Technologies providing proactive
defense include Intent-Based Filtering (IBF), which performs
intelligent natural language processing, and Recurrent
Pattern Detection (RPD™) which checks each message
against Internet traffic to identify outbreaks.
In order to combat increasingly sophisticated malicious
email attacks, we’re committed to providing our customers
with an expanding arsenal of security features,” said
John Thielens, CTO of Tumbleweed Communications. “Outbreak
Detection, combined with Tumbleweed’s other threat
protection technology, ensures that our customers are comprehensively
protected from the first minute onward.”
The new Outbreak Detection functionality will roll out to existing
MailGate Email Firewall customers immediately with the 6.1.1
update, and to existing MailGate AntiSpam Appliance customers
in early June with the 2.5 update, free of charge.
About Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD)
Spam, phishing, spyware, viruses, and worms are evolving at a frantic pace, and
dangerous new spam/malware hybrids continue to emerge. Messages are continuously
modified to stay far ahead of rule-based methods, and temporary distribution
sources (sender IPs) undermine reputation-based services. Rather than addressing
individual messages, RPD technology detects the outbreaks themselves – and
blocks all messages associated with them. The most significant advantage of this
approach is that it overcomes one of the most pressing issues in the industry:
response time to new threats. RPD detects outbreaks as soon as they emerge: the
faster an outbreak proliferates, the faster it is identified. Messages associated
with mass outbreaks are blocked immediately, with no need to analyze each message.
The result is that users are protected in real-time, all the time. RPD is effective
against any mailing that is mass-distributed over the Internet: malware, frauds
and spam in any language or format. The Recurrent Pattern Detection technology
utilized in MailGate solutions is licensed from Commtouch, a global developer
and provider of proprietary anti-spam solutions. Recurrent Pattern Detection
and RPD are trademarks of Commtouch Software Ltd.
About Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Tumbleweed provides security solutions for email protection, file transfers, and identity validation that allow organizations to safely conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three comprehensive product suites: MailGate, SecureTransport, and Validation Authority. MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses, and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption, and routing. SecureTransport enables business to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. The Validation Authority is the world-leading solution for determining the validity of digital certificates. Tumbleweed’s enterprise and government customers include ABN Amro, Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), St. Luke's Episcopal Healthcare System, the US Food and Drug Administration, the US Department of Defense, and all four branches of the US Armed Forces. Tumbleweed was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. For additional information about Tumbleweed go to www.tumbleweed.com or call 650-216-2000.
SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT
Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on plans and expectations as of the date of the press release, and that a number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the guidance given at this time. These factors are described in the Safe Harbor statement below.
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to Tumbleweed’s email security products. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “potential,” “continue,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “estimates,” and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed’s Form 10-K filed March 16, 2005 and Form 10-Q filed May 10, 2005.
Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release, which represents the Company’s expectations only as of the date of this release and should not be viewed as a statement about the Company’s expectations after such date. Although this release may remain available on the Company’s website or elsewhere, its continued availability does not indicate that the Company is reaffirming or confirming any of the information contained herein.
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