M86 Security, provider of Web and messaging security products, has announced the availability of MailMarshal SMTP 6.7.
MailMarshal from M86 Security is a comprehensive messaging security solution that unifies anti-spam, e-mail threat protection, content security, policy enforcement, and data leakage prevention.
It combines content security and the Defense-in-Depth anti-spam engine with blended threat detection and IP reputation analysis, and it applies them all to both inbound and outbound e-mail communication.
MailMarshal also includes IP Reputation and the Blended Threat Module-an integrated “in the cloud” malware protection and blended threat offering.†
The new release of MailMarshal SMTP, including the Blended Threat Module, is the first M86 Security product to fully interact with the behavioral malware detection technology from Avinti, acquired by M86 earlier this year.
The intelligence from the cloud-based Blended Threat Knowledge Service is also incorporated into the company’s WebMarshal and R3000 Web Security products to enhance the blocking of malicious Websites.
M86 Security calls blended threats “notoriously devious,” adding that they defeat or bypass traditional gateway antivirus and spam solutions by “replacing malicious attachments with a URL link to a legitimate-looking Website that often executes automated, drive-by downloads that infect users and expose them to vulnerability exploits.”
Such blended threat e-mails often employ social engineering techniques and clever designs to lure recipients into clicking on the link that then triggers the infection. Once infected, a barrage of malicious activity can take place -from the stealing of confidential information and data leakage to the setting up of botnets to execute further criminal activity.
“Blended threats are the most prominent malicious email security threat to organizations today,” says William Kilmer, chief marketing officer at M86 Security. “In fact, according to recent research from M86 Security Labs, blended e-mail threats have spiked to exceed 30 percent of all spam, about one in every three messages.”
MailMarshal SMTP 6.7 includes two other significant capabilities: the M86 IP Reputation Service and SpamBotCensor. The M86 IP Reputation Service is derived from the M86 Security Labs and blocks incoming spam based on the sending IP address reputation to dramatically decrease bandwidth previously consumed by spam, freeing up network and IT resources for other business-critical functions.
SpamBotCensor uses M86 Security Labs’ vast knowledge of botnets to identify and block bot-based spam with a high degree of accuracy.
New features in MailMarshal SMTP 6.7 include:
- Blended Threat Module–This goes beyond traditional, signature-based antivirus offerings to block e-mails that contain malicious URL links and utilizes a cloud-based malware behavior analysis service for rapid identification of new malicious links.
- M86 IP Reputation Service–This service accurately rejects the majority of spam messages an organization would normally receive before the messages are transmitted to an organization’s email gateway.
- SpamBotCensor–This feature quickly and accurately identifies spam messages sent by known botnets. The M86 Security Labs was the first security research team to prove that 80-90 percent of the world’s spam is produced by a handful of botnets – SpamBotCensor is a proprietary solution which builds on this research to block spam with near-zero false positives.
MailMarshal SMTP 6.7 is available immediately for evaluation by download. Customers can also add the Blended Threat Module to any existing or new MailMarshal SMTP subscription. For more information, visit the M86 Security Web site.
