Axway Announces Tumbleweed MailGate Enhancements to Block Backscatter and Cut Unwanted SPAM-triggere

cathryn van der walt
Thursday, 15 January 2009 18:00

Axway, the leading global provider of multi-enterprise solutions and infrastructure, today announced a new enhancement to MailGate®, Tumbleweed Communications’ award-winning email security product. MailGate now combats unrequested non-delivery notifications through enhanced attachment header scanning.

Over the last year, spammers have focused on disguising themselves through forged email addresses in mass spam distributions, which subsequently increase the number of unwanted spam-like messages for end-users when spam messages are “bounced.” This has contributed to increased end-user spam levels, which have seen a 204 percent rise since August of 2007, according to global data from Tumbleweed’s Spam Portal.

On a weekly basis, Tumbleweed’s Spam Portal tracks the geographic origins of spam according to IP addresses of senders. The Tumbleweed Spam Portal currently indicates that China (14.22%), Brazil (13.06%), Korea (6.78%), the United States (6.31%) and India (5.91%) are the top 5 spam sending countries in the world. Australia ranks in 17th position with 1.3% of the world’s spam.

When an email server rejects a spam message from a forged email address, it generates a non-delivery report (NDR) email notification, also known as a “bounce” message. This notification is sent to the individual whose email address was forged by the spammer, rather than spammers themselves, generating additional spam-like email, called backscatter, for innocent end-users.

To combat this type of email clutter, MailGate now offers an embedded solution that recognizes unwanted NDR emails and filters them as regular spam, thus preventing NDR notifications from reaching an end-user’s inbox. MailGate recognizes MIME headers within an embedded message to prevent unwanted NDRs from tarnishing the reputation of the apparent sender.

“In the current economic climate, companies want to reduce the high costs involved in defending their business-critical communications. Inbound and outbound threats evolve so rapidly businesses need to be very aware of potential email security issues to ensure email security is not compromised. Throughout 2009 Tumbleweed will remain focused on partnering in the content and email security sector,” outlined Mr Stree Naidu, regional vice president, Tumbleweed APAC and Japan.

“With the latest enhancement, Tumbleweed’s award-winning MailGate product continues to deliver through its innovative capabilities,” he concluded.

To learn more about MailGate, visit http://www.tumbleweed.com/products/mailgate/index.html