Brightmail Updates Anti-Spam Software

Anti-spam software company Brightmail announced on Monday the release of a new version of its enterprise anti-spam software, promising the updated version would keep up with spammers’ latest tricks

Brightmail Anti-Spam 5.0 boasts a variety of improvements, including the ability to set rules to filter email by the Web site mentioned in the call-to-action, and an improved method of cleaning HTML messages to filter by content.

With URL rules, Brightmail will filter out spam based on the occurrence of URLs in suspect emails. The company has found that spammers have tried to get around content filters by embedding their URLs in seemingly legitimate messages. The URL rules are sent to Brightmail customers’ computers every 10 minutes. Brightmail also buffed up its BrightSig system, which cleans messages in an effort to understand the content spammers try to obscure.

“If you look at how you have to fight spam, you need to constantly invent new technologies,” said Carlin Wiegner, Brightmail product manager.

Brightmail said the new URL rules catch 97 percent of spam that is unrecognizable to other filters. In beta testing, the software had an overall success rate of 90 to 95 percent.

In addition, Brightmail added customization tools that allow mail administrators to be more aggressive in targeting unwanted mail.

“From a mail manager perspective, it’s spam,” said Wiegner. “It’s not something Brightmail would consider spam, but it is what this customer would.”

The updated software runs at $1,499 per year for under 50 users. Larger businesses are eligible for per-seat discounts. The company boasts over 1,000 enterprise and ISP customers, with its software blocking about 1 billion emails a day.

Wiegner said the enhancements would not alter Brightmail’s one-in-a-million false-positive rate.

The company also announced that its spam software would be bundled with mail management systems from Borderware Technologies and IronPort Systems. It can also be deployed as a hosted solution and on gateway server.