Cloudmark Outlines Strategy for Fighting Phishing Attacks

Cloudmark Inc., the proven leader in real-time messaging security, clarified its anti-phishing strategy following a review by Carnegie Mellon University. The anti-fraud toolbar test included an outdated Cloudmark beta toolbar for IE that has been discontinued and was not receiving live updates for the Cloudmark phishing URL feed. And yet, despite the fact that the toolbar was not getting updates from the main Cloudmark phishing URL feed, the Cloudmark product ranked among the better performers, accurately identifying the majority of the phishing websites used in the test.

The Carnegie Mellon research team has printed an addendum to the report to clarify the status of the outdated Cloudmark program that was tested. The addendum notes, in part, "After our study began we learned that Cloudmark is no longer supporting this toolbar and has since removed this toolbar from their web site. They now offer a phishing URL feed for other toolbars."

Bassam Khan, Cloudmark's Vice President of Marketing, explained the move away from the release of a stand-alone anti-fraud tool bar for IE.

"Efforts on releasing the anti-fraud toolbar were abandoned in favor of developing our Anti-Phishing Data Service that enables service providers and third party developers to enhance their own toolbars and web-based anti-phishing solutions, as well as providing edge anti-phishing solutions for our SP base," commented Khan. "Our Anti-Phishing Data Service has been repeatedly proven to be the most accurate, catching the highest number of variant attacks."

"We spent a tremendous amount of time evaluating a variety of phishing data from other providers similar to that offered by Cloudmark," said Sunil James, a product manager at Arbor Networks. "After our 'bake-off' ended, it became readily apparent to us that Cloudmark's dataset was much more robust and timely than many other tested. This is a testament to the value of the Cloudmark Global Threat Network, which enables Cloudmark to better validate phishing threats than its current competitors, it seems."

Cloudmark makes this data feed available to toolbar developers and OEM partners. In additional to URL feeds, Cloudmark also provides enhanced anti-phishing protection by providing algorithmic analysis of messages. This is made available as a Gateway solution to the company's SP customers so that all phishing threats can be dropped at the edge of the network.

Cloudmark's automated Anti-Phishing Data Service scans fraudulent email and extracts the phishing URLs, in real time, using the collaborative reputation system to confirm that the URL is in actuality a phishing site and not a legitimate URL. As soon as a URL has been confirmed as a phishing site, it is added to the phishing data feed, updated by the minute with intelligence collected by Cloudmark's Global Threat Network. Cloudmark's industry-leading speed of collection and dissemination are pivotal to its superior performance due to the transient nature of phishing threats.

Cloudmark's Global Threat Network protects 120 million mailboxes in more than 160 countries. The power behind Cloudmark's messaging anti-abuse services is live, real-time global information feeds from user clients and multiple tiers of protection from inboxes to the network edge and beyond. Cloudmark's dynamic protection from spam, phishing, and virus attacks leverages ultra-efficient fingerprinting algorithms to identify unique attributes of various threats and provide the industry's fastest response and blocking of abusive messages -- before they reach users. Data collection, analysis, and update cycles are fully automated to ensure accurate and "unspoofable" data as well as the industry's fastest, most accurate response.

About Cloudmark Inc.

Cloudmark delivers the industry's only secure messaging solution that combines sophisticated technology with the feedback of millions of trusted users from over 160 countries. This collaborative approach forms the platform for Cloudmark's award-winning software products and services that provide critical real-time protection from messaging threats such as spam, phishing and viruses for service providers, consumers and business. For more information about Cloudmark, visit the company's Web site at: http://www.cloudmark.com .

Cloudmark, the Cloudmark logo, Cloudmark Desktop, Cloudmark Server Edition, Cloudmark Immunity, Cloudmark Authority, Cloudmark Global Threat Network 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.

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