MailChannels and Cloudmark Help City of Richmond Control Spam, Phishing and Viruses
Traffic Control with Cloudmark Authority™ Virtually Eliminates Unwanted Email in User Inboxes
SAN FRANCISCO, February 05, 2007 – To combat the surging volume of unwanted email, the City of Richmond, Canada, has deployed a carrier-grade joint messaging security solution integrating MailChannels' Traffic Control capabilities with Cloudmark Authority™ anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-virus protection. Since enhancing its messaging anti-abuse solution in 2006, the City of Richmond has vastly reduced the amount of unwanted email being delivered daily to employees, while optimizing use of network and operational resources such as storage, bandwidth and administrative time.
The administration for the City of Richmond in British Columbia, Canada includes the departments of Engineering, Waste Removal, Parks and Recreation and Cultural Affairs. The administration operates much as a service provider, providing Internet access and other communications services to over 1,500 city employees. With the community and local government enjoying rapid growth and preparing to host skating events during the 2010 Winter Olympics, they were receiving about 200,000 emails daily, ninety percent (90%) of which constituted some form of spam, phishing or virus attack. The City of Richmond required an accurate, carrier-grade solution that could handle large volumes of spam, viruses and other threats.
Surging messaging abuse taxed the network infrastructure, leading Adam Cheal, Senior Network Analyst, to enhance the City's messaging security solution earlier this year. Along with MailChannels' Traffic Control solution, which regulates the flow of suspicious email traffic by performing throttling and traffic shaping at the network's edge, Cloudmark Authority was installed for end-to-end protection against spam, phishing and viruses.
"Even with an excellent email traffic control solution, the volume of spam was becoming a major inconvenience to our employees and wasted system resources," Cheal said. "We told MailChannels we wanted a solution that could effectively block the new types of messaging abuse we were seeing on our network, and they recommended Cloudmark. The joint MailChannels-Cloudmark solution has virtually eliminated unwanted mails from getting through to our users' inboxes. This has also helped improve the utilization of network resources."
Cloudmark's industry-leading 98%+ accuracy in filtering spam, phishing and virus attacks has reduced the overall volume of unwanted mail disrupting employee productivity, as well as incidents of "false positives" in which legitimate messages are erroneously blocked. The City's mail storage requirements have also been reduced since many users effectively use email inboxes for document management and archiving.
According to Cheal, "Some employees have actually called to thank me for reducing their spam load and it's not very often that users call with positive news. The solution has definitely improved our overall efficiency and productivity, as well as user satisfaction."
MailChannels Traffic Control slows down suspicious email traffic at the network edge, interrupting the spammer's economic motivation and removing up to 90% of abusive traffic. Traffic Control's unique, patent-pending traffic shaping and connection multiplexing technology provides the industry's most effective protection against botnet-originated spam attacks, reducing abuse levels and improving service availability. CEO Ken Simpson says the company integrates Cloudmark' s messaging anti-abuse technology into its Traffic Control solution to provide customers with an extra level of protection that ensures user satisfaction and optimizes use of system resources.
"Cloudmark was a clear choice when we were asked to recommend a messaging security partner," said Simpson. "In service provider networks worldwide, their Authority solution has been proven to deliver the highest accuracy while utilizing resources much more efficiently. Government agencies, enterprises, and post-secondary institutions are beginning to contend with messaging abuse issues similar to those challenging service providers. They need a solution that is just as scalable, accurate, and efficient."
About MailChannels
MailChannels develops and markets next generation email infrastructure protection solutions to ensure the reliable delivery of legitimate email. MailChannels' solutions allow information technology professionals to more effectively utilize scarce resources and improve end-user productivity by dramatically improving email service availability, reliability and security.
Media Contact for MailChannels:
- Heather Drugge
- Go Communications
- (604) 639 6648
- hdrugge@go-communicate.com
About Cloudmark
Cloudmark builds messaging security software that protects communications service provider networks and their subscribers against the widest range of messaging threats. Only Cloudmark Security Platform™ delivers instant security and control across diverse messaging environments, enabling communications service providers to create a safe user experience, protect revenue and safeguard their brand, while streamlining infrastructure and reducing operational costs. Cloudmark's patented solutions protect more than 120 tier-one customers worldwide, including AT&T, Verizon, Swisscom, Comcast, Cox and NTT.