Cloudmark Out for Blood

SAN FRANCISCO -- With billions of spam, virus and phishing messages being sent daily from hijacked PCs, messaging security leader Cloudmark, Inc. has launched an extensive effort to help service providers detect, remediate and prevent attacks from computer “zombies.” Intelligence and analytics gathered from the global network of service providers protected by Cloudmark automatically identifies zombie activities so providers can quarantine infected PCs and direct users to remediation service partners.

"ISPs need to address the email security threats caused by zombies and botnets," says Richi Jennings, lead analyst for the email security practice at Ferris Research. "However, it's important to address these threats in ways that minimize inconvenience to subscribers -- no ISP wants to alienate their customers. Proactive content filtering and remediation preserves customer relations and email reliability. The insights that Cloudmark can provide into outbound content and unusual spikes in volume are obviously pivotal to the process."

With an average of 100 billion emails sent daily and 92% estimated to be some form of spam, Cloudmark’s data shows that over 90% of spam and phishing messages now originate from hijacked computers.

“Zombie activities continue to escalate as spammers look for new ways to dodge IP address-based blacklists and other sender-based detection systems,” says Vipul Ved Prakash, Cloudmark founder and Chief Scientist. “The issue is gaining in complexity as many zombies now work in ‘trickle mode,’ sending only a few messages per hour, making the activities even harder to discover. The reputations of both ISPs and their subscribers are compromised as spam is traced back to the provider’s network, and often results in temporary blacklisting of service provider networks.”

Cloudmark Inc.