Testing by The Tolly Group Finds Cloudmark Spam Filtering 21% More Accurate Than Symantec Brightmail
Cloudmark Authority for Service Providers Blocks More Bad Messages With No "False Positives"
20% Accuracy Improvement Would Save ISPs $20B
San Francisco, CA, December 12, 2006 – Recent testing by The Tolly Group of messaging security solutions for service providers determined that Cloudmark Authority™ blocks spam with 21% higher accuracy than its leading competitor, Symantec Brightmail. Cloudmark blocked abusive messages with 97% accuracy without causing any "false positives," or erroneous blocking of legitimate messages versus Symantec's 80% accuracy. An in-depth Cost of Ownership analysis developed by Cloudmark determined a 20% accuracy improvement would save service providers worldwide more than $20B this year alone, with a mid-sized ISP saving approximately $10M per year in subscriber churn and infrastructure costs.
Renowned for its industry insight and objectivity, The Tolly Group tested two leading solutions for Internet Service Provider (ISP) network infrastructures, Cloudmark Authority™ and Symantec's Brightmail Anti-spam Version 6.0. During July and August of this year, each solution processed more than 45,000 messages. In line with industry standard measurements, Tolly Group engineers benchmarked accuracy in terms of both effectiveness in stopping "bad" mail -- those containing spam --- and percentage of false positives, or blocking of legitimate messages. Both companies were given the opportunity to provide input on the test, install their software and review and react to results prior to drafting of the final report.
The Rising Costs of Inaccuracy
With the ratio of spam to legitimate messages rising steadily, The Tolly Group report concludes, "such a spam blockage rate as exhibited by Brightmail Anti-spam is unacceptable for service provider and enterprise-class scenarios where accuracy is a high priority." Cloudmark researchers can forecast the value of accuracy improvements for individual service providers with the greatest savings generally achieved by reducing costs associated with customer churn, complaint calls, infrastructure, bandwidth and storage. (For details on Cloudmark's extensive ROI calculator, visit http://www.cloudmark.com/serviceproviders/economic/.) In turn, reallocation of resources improves the TCO models for related investments.
"Inaccurate spam filtering can directly impact service providers financially while potentially compromising their reputations and those of their subscribers," Tolly Group president/CEO and founder Kevin Tolly says. "Integrated, effective messaging security solutions blocking spam on a single platform can be a significant, if transparent differentiator for service providers worldwide. The accuracy advantage of 21% that we found in conducting these tests has substantial implications for subscriber retention and overall profitability."
Key Elements of Accuracy
Cloudmark attributes its superior accuracy to three key factors:
- Intelligent Message Fingerprinting: Cloudmark's methodology leverages advanced fingerprinting algorithms designed to target sophisticated spamming and virus proliferation techniques. Since only relevant threat attributes in messages are fingerprinted, Cloudmark is able to rapidly recognize spam, phishing and viruses that have undergone polymorphic mutations, such as changes in text, URL, image, sender or other attributes.
- Global Threat Detection Network: Cloudmark's global network of protected service provider networks and mailboxes provides real-time feedback on message fingerprints. Collecting data from more than 120 million users and 50 service providers in 163 countries, Cloudmark provides accurate, language-agnostic threat analysis;
- Cloudmark Trust Evaluation System: Feedback is corroborated and analyzed in real time by Cloudmark's Trust Evaluation System (TES) which tracks the reputations of each reporting source. By preserving the integrity of reports, TES ensures industry-leading accuracy and allows any inaccurate classifications to be corrected instantaneously.
"The Tolly Group's efforts validate what we've been seeing in service provider deployments and trials for some time now," says Bassam Khan, VP Marketing at Cloudmark. "Cloudmark Authority was architected from the ground up for demanding service provider environments and The Tolly Group excels among independent test labs at simulating high-volume network traffic. It's extremely rewarding to have such a widely respected organization verify our accuracy advantage."
About the Tolly Group
The Tolly Group, an independent testing and strategic consulting organization based in Boca Raton, FL, offers a full range of services designed to furnish both the vendor and end-user communities with authoritative and unbiased information. Additionally, The Tolly Group is recognized worldwide for its expertise in assessing leading-edge technologies.
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.