Cloudmark and Qpass Team to Block Mobile Spam
Mobile Carriers Can Offer Anti-Spam and Anti-Malware Protections for SMS, MMS and Email as Complimentary or Paid Service
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 29, 2005—Cloudmark™ Inc., the proven leader in secure messaging from the desktop to the gateway, and Qpass, whose software powers the marketplace for digital media and services, today announced from the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference that they have partnered to provide mobile carriers all around the world with a new mobile version of Authority, Cloudmark's award-winning gateway solution, to protect against spam, malware and other attacks targeting wireless devices. With Cloudmark delivered through Qpass, mobile operators can rapidly deploy Authority to selected subscribers as a value add or paid service to protect its users, strengthen customer satisfaction and reduce churn. With Cloudmark, subscribers become a part of the world's largest collaborative email and browser threat network, which currently protects more than 50 million mailboxes.
Mobile spam has created a mobile communications crisis in countries such as Japan, the U.K. and China, where mobile devices are the primary means of messaging, sometimes outnumbering PCs four to one. For rogue telemarketers and hackers, mobile spam is an ideal delivery mechanism, because it allows them to reach hundreds of millions of mobile subscribers quickly and cost-effectively. In the U.S., despite a federal law banning unsolicited mobile messages, mobile spam has reached a critical point among domestic carriers, because subscribers consider it intrusive—even at low volumes. Many subscribers are also forced to pay for the unwanted messages, which for carriers mean costly increases in customer complaints and high subscriber churn. Worse yet are the security risks posed by mobile spam, with instances of mobile malware growing steadily. Because of the limited number of characters allowed in SMS text, unwanted messages are difficult to intercept with traditional content filtering methods, which require much more content to identify the tell-tale patterns contained in spam. Users who depend on Blackberrys and other such mobile email devices are especially vulnerable to the security risks and productivity erosion of mobile spam, because of its much higher occurrence on PC and Web-based clients.
"The growth of wireless messaging presents an irresistible target for spammers and scammers," said Richi Jennings, practice leader for messaging security at Ferris Research. "But short message spam isn't the same as email spam. A successful defense needs to be developed with the characteristics of mobile abuse in mind."
Cloudmark as delivered through Qpass will enable carriers to protect subscribers from the nuisance, cost and security risks posed by mobile spam while preserving subscriber trust with an add-on anti-spam service that mobile users can see. As part of Cloudmark's global collaborative network, mobile subscribers can leverage the collective intelligence of millions of other users for a humanized defense that works in real time to shield against attacks as soon as they occur with no false positives. While other feedback mechanisms depend on manual intervention, Cloudmark's feedback, analysis and update cycle is fully automated for a 20-second response to attacks as soon as they're unleashed in the public cloud. Cloudmark additionally employs five fingerprinting algorithms, which are generated for each message and checked against a spam database, which continuously draws from user feedback to update and, if necessary, correct itself.
"Mobile carriers want to show their subscribers they take their privacy and security very seriously," said Eric Harber, vice president of corporate and business development at Qpass. "By enabling them to offer Cloudmark as a free or paid service, Qpass is helping carriers all around the globe restore subscriber confidence while protecting them from all the hidden dangers of spam, including viruses, phishing, malware and other attacks."
With Qpass software, carriers can quickly provision and activate Cloudmark as a free subscriber service or integrate Qpass' billing and payment components to extend Cloudmark as a paid service to selected users. The Qpass Operator Suite provides carriers comprehensive tools to create flexible offers and promotions, rapidly provision service and maintain access controls, execute efficient payment and settlement, maintain sophisticated real-time financial reporting, and deliver automated self-care tools for subscribers.
"We are pleased to be working with Qpass so mobile operators can offer a new subscriber service for mobile email and SMS protection," said David Somerville, business development director at Cloudmark. "With the Qpass Operator Suite, carriers can quickly provision, activate and bill for the Cloudmark service for an immediate impact on subscriber security and customer satisfaction."
About Qpass
Qpass is the fastest path to profit in digital media commerce. Ringtones, mobile games and wallpaper images are only the forefront of a growing wave of digital media products and services for consumers, expanding in tandem with new services for the mobile enterprise. Qpass software and services are the critical infrastructure required to operate premium services businesses profitably, with the agility required to fully capture new opportunities, and with the sound business controls and processes required to scale operations efficiently. As the most broadly deployed foundation for mobile and fixed-network commerce, Qpass serves 150 million mobile subscribers and more than 60 million web portal, WiFi and VOIP users worldwide. Qpass processes tens of millions of premium services transactions per month and has processed more than 300 million transactions since inception, representing more than $720 million in gross retail consumer sales. Qpass customers include Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile International, Vodafone, Sprint, ALLTEL, US Cellular, One and Skype. Qpass is privately held and has headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Vienna, Austria. For more information, visit www.qpass.com.
Qpass Media Contact
Beth Mayer (206) 267-2023qpass@text100.com
Cloudmark, the Cloudmark logo, Cloudmark Desktop, Cloudmark Server Edition, Cloudmark Immunity, Cloudmark Authority, and SpamNet are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cloudmark Inc., for use in the United States and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
About Cloudmark
Cloudmark protects 2 billion global subscribers daily from an explosion in messaging abuses across more operator networks than anyone else. Only Cloudmark defends the world’s largest Mobile, Fixed and Social Media Providers, including AT&T, Comcast, MySpace, NTT, Swisscom and Time Warner Cable, with scalable and accurate protection against the widest range of existing and emerging messaging threats.