E-mail security company IronPort Systems, San Bruno, CA, launched a Web reputation tool today that checks both the e-mail reputation and URL of e-mail senders.
Most e-mail content filtering technology doesn’t assess whether the URLs within the e-mails are links to viruses or phishing sites, a growing problem, according to IronPort. In addition, phishing Web sites — linked within the e-mails — are virtually indistinguishable from the real banking and e-commerce sites they spoof.
IronPort has seen a 200 percent increase in spyware sent via e-mail in the past six months, said Tim Gillis, vice president of worldwide marketing at IronPort.
“The authors of these threats are blending e-mail, Web and even IM technologies to find the weak spot in the network,” he said.
Using its SenderBase Network and real-time scanning of the Internet for newly created or modified URLs, the company’s technology develops a score for each URL.
“If you’re using a cheap [domain] registry overseas and have been registered only two days and you hosted the site in the same place as the other [bad] one was, you may get a low score,” said Patrick Peterson, vice president of technology at IronPort.
Conversely, if the company is an established marketer, holding the same URL for several years and having good e-mail practices, it’s likely to have a high score, Peterson said.
SenderBase data are fed by more than 100,000 contributing organizations, including eight of the 10 largest ISPs and Fortune 500 companies.
Christine Blank covers online marketing and advertising, including e-mail marketing and paid search, for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
