Cloudmark increases messaging security for a U.S. ILEC’s 500,000 subscribers

Background: The customer is one of the United States’ most-respected and best-performing full-service local providers of data and voice communications services and equipment, and a regional provider of wireless and long distance communications services, with a legacy of unparalleled customer service and financial strength. Founded in 1873, the Company provides telecommunications service on its owned local and wireless networks. The service provider serves two million customers in a 3-state, 2400 square mile area, and is intent on growing its subscriber base, both within the borders of its local service and beyond.

Challenges: The company has 500,000 subscribers to its messaging services. It began to find that its desire to protect its subscribers from messaging abuse by stopping spam at the edge of their network, a best standard of practice for service providers, was beginning to create a strain on resources. The customer finds that the level of spam hitting its network on any given day currently runs at 85-95% of total email traffic. Its legacy service was capturing less than 65% of that, with accuracy on a continuous decline. Customers were becoming frustrated with the delay in processing email that they have come to expect at a near-instantaneous rate. High rates of inaccuracy lead to false positives and false criticals, causing an increase in direct complaint calls to the help desk. Finally, increasing inaccuracies left the provider vulnerable to considerable threat by email-borne viruses that could disrupt not only its systems but also its agreements with other service providers. Increasing levels of fraud were creating another level of risk as subscribers increasingly believe that service providers should protect them from fraudulent communications.

Issues: The incumbent provider’s level of inaccuracy and intensive methods of filtering messages were creating a drag on resources, delaying throughput, and resulting in an increase in capex to keep up with the ill effects of the problem.  Message stores filled with junk email, wasting precious storage space and preventing the service provider from being able to respond quickly to competitive offerings of 2GB or “unlimited” email storage. Servers were running at 90-100% of CPU, causing a risk to operations and/or the requirement for continually purchasing additional servers. Because of the legacy spam provider’s inability to correct errors in misclassified spam, calls to the help desk were on the rise, as was customer churn.

Solution provided by Cloudmark: The customer deployed Cloudmark’s Authority for Service Providers on an Openwave Email Mx delivery messaging transfer agent (MTA). Cloudmark Authority for service providers blocks spam, phishing and virus attacks in real time, at the delivery MTA for this customer, to optimize network performance and reduce maintenance and customer support. Cloudmark offers customizable solutions from the network edge to the client. Cloudmark’s easy to manage, scalable, carrier-grade solution combines the industry’s most efficient fingerprinting algorithm systems with a global community of trusted real-time reporters and an automated feedback system. With more than 100 million mailboxes protected worldwide, Cloudmark’s reach and advantages in terms of speed and accuracy continue to grow while competitive methods struggle to keep pace with the deluge of new threats. Service providers see an immediate improvement in filtering performance and lowered resource utilization—allowing operations staff to be more productive and achieve the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership.

"Head-to-head trials with the incumbent anti-spam provider demonstrated solid results to the customer that made switching to Cloudmark a smart decision. We demonstrated outstanding results in live trials, with accuracy improvements of 21%, including an 80% reduction in false positives, and one-fiftieth the number of false criticals, the lost messages that will cost you your business. Additionally, Cloudmark required 15% less CPU, while also catching nearly 11% more spam, all of which lead to significant savings in both capex and opex for this service provider. Finally, Cloudmark stopped 10 times as many viruses as the incumbent provider, and five times as many fraudulent emails."

Jamie de Guerre, Vice President , Technology Marketing - Cloudmark

Summary: Customer complaints are significantly reduced and churn is down. Servers now run at 13-40% peak CPU (vs. 90-100%), providing head room to take on any added load that may become necessary. Installing Cloudmark Authority pre-empted the requirement to double the number of messaging servers, as had been previously planned, while increasing throughput and processing speed. Room is available for traffic and subscriber growth, important to this carrier’s strategic plans. Message stores now have space for legitimate email, critical with the changing regulatory landscape, and room is available for improved service offerings. Capex for the messaging security infrastructure has been reduced.

Cloudmark, Inc.
128 King Street
Second Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA
Tel: +1-415-543-1220
Fax: +1-415-543-1233

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