Industry experts acknowledge today that, between 85-90 percent of global email traffic is spam and to counteract this growing flood of spam, the email security industry is increasing the use of blocklists and more aggressive content filters. However instead of nipping this problem in the bud, such a move has in fact resulted... |
Industry experts acknowledge today that, between 85-90 percent of global email traffic is spam and to counteract this growing flood of spam, the email security industry is increasing the use of blocklists and more aggressive content filters. However instead of nipping this problem in the bud, such a move has in fact resulted in a corresponding increase in the rate of false positives, or increased levels of undelivered legitimate email.
False positives can be more accurately termed “e-mail casualties” – those e-mails that simply do not make it to their intended destination but go missing in action, along with the important information that they were carrying for the recipient.
These lost emails cost businesses an estimated 3.5 billion dollars a year and more importantly damaged business relationships and reputation.
The anti-spam industry has always been aware of the false positive issue but has often downplayed it as an unavoidable trade-off – an unfortunate by-product, or simply “collateral damage”.
However, the e-mail security agenda has evolved to the point where the critical issue is no longer about blocking spam, but is now focused on “e-mail deliverability” – ensuring that all important emails are effectively and reliably delivered.
“Businesses have come to believe that these lost emails are simply a ‘necessary evil’ in the war against spam and other online security threats. BoxSentry strongly disagrees with this misconception and has developed an approach to remedy this,” said Manish Goel, CEO of BoxSentry.
In a bid to address this rising concern, Singapore headquartered e-mail security technology company BoxSentry unveiled the latest release of its RealMail solution dubbing it as a “unique” solution that will significantly enhance email deliverability and security for enterprises.
Working around the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” as opposed to the traditional stance of “guility until proven innocent” predominantly adopted by first generation anti-spam solutions, RealMail boasts a technology that enables enterprises to counter external and internal attacks, including spam, on their networks whilst still ensuring near-100 percent delivery of legitimate emails.
It utilizes an “authentication-based” logic instead of conventional filtering, which means that it authenticates legitimate mails instead of simply filtering suspect mails.
Its primary focus is on email deliverability and has achieved this through integrating automatically self-learning accept lists, sophisticated heuristics, positive reputation data and sender authentication methods. This results in emails being intelligently classified, allowing legitimate emails to be ‘fast-tracked’ to intended recipients. Consequently, businesses are better protected against unwanted emails on their networks.
According to a report by Opus One, some popular current generation email security solutions cause false positive (error) rates as high as 0.85 percent. This means that one in every 120 emails may be lost in transmission due to a classification error by a spam filter, and this rate can be higher when the email is in a non-English language.
The company, which strategically focuses on non-English speaking markets in the Asia Pacific and Middle East, has rolled out its new solution to be language agnostic. It protects legitimate email traffic regardless of languages and is able to do so in various Asian and Arabic languages such as Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu and Arabic.
Another benefit of RealMail is that it does not perform keyword content filtering, which means that user’s privacy is fully protected, a factor according to BoxSentry has been favourably received by its government and financials services customers around the region.
“The number of organisations today using email of mission critical communication is significant and growin exponentially across the Asia Pacific and the Middle East, “said Goel.
“RealMail’s next generations approach to email deliverability will ensure that this vital communications medium remains highly reliable, safe and secure.”
Enterprises with existing security solutions are able to integrate RealMail as an additional layer of security into their infrastructure. Implementation, according to BoxSentry, is simple and low-risk. |
