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Vipul Ved Prakash, A robust system for messaging security protecting the entire Internet
Messaging systems are inherently susceptible to broadcast attacks such as spam, viruses and phishing attacks. Email in particular enables low-cost broadcast attacks with everyone touching the system—end users, systems administrators and service providers alike—bearing the brunt and sharing the inconvenience of being attacked. Messaging abuse not only threatens subscriber satisfaction and service provider network security, but the entire ecology of messaging platforms. Attacks are becoming a growing pain point, and by extension opportunity, for service providers, as end-users increasingly look to ISPs to combat the upsurge of unwanted messages at the network edge. For providers, the challenge is a dual-edged sword: 1) the costs and inefficiencies of many solutions increase overhead and compromise profits; and, 2) a framework for communicating about messaging security – in particular about stopping attacks that users never see – is lacking so that most dialogue about the topic occurs when customers are frustrated by “false positives” (legitimate emails wrongly detained). Cloudmark sees the true challenges of messaging security transcending technology and even economics to upholding the culture and sanctity of Internet communication. Specifically, this means going beyond merely blocking malevolent messages in real time to enabling users and providers to protect themselves, and making launching attacks less viable and profitable in the first place. Technologically, challenges include speed, accuracy, and instilling mechanisms in the detection system that prevent attackers from subverting messaging security efforts.
Messaging systems are inherently susceptible to broadcast attacks such as spam, viruses and phishing attacks. Email in particular enables low-cost broadcast attacks with everyone touching the system—end users, systems administrators and service providers alike—bearing the brunt and sharing the inconvenience of being attacked.
Messaging abuse not only threatens subscriber satisfaction and service provider network security, but the entire ecology of messaging platforms. Attacks are becoming a growing pain point, and by extension opportunity, for service providers, as end-users increasingly look to ISPs to combat the upsurge of unwanted messages at the network edge.
For providers, the challenge is a dual-edged sword: 1) the costs and inefficiencies of many solutions increase overhead and compromise profits; and, 2) a framework for communicating about messaging security – in particular about stopping attacks that users never see – is lacking so that most dialogue about the topic occurs when customers are frustrated by “false positives” (legitimate emails wrongly detained).
Cloudmark sees the true challenges of messaging security transcending technology and even economics to upholding the culture and sanctity of Internet communication. Specifically, this means going beyond merely blocking malevolent messages in real time to enabling users and providers to protect themselves, and making launching attacks less viable and profitable in the first place.
Technologically, challenges include speed, accuracy, and instilling mechanisms in the detection system that prevent attackers from subverting messaging security efforts.
Name: Vipul Ved Prakash Title: Founder & Chief Scientist Company: Cloudmark, Inc.
At the most basic level, Vipul Ved Prakash invented a technology and collaborative approach to messaging security that gave rise to the fastest, most accurate and universal system deployed around the world today. With speed, accuracy and language-agnosticism translating into savings of millions of dollars and days of downtime, the superior performance and collaborative culture arising from the Cloudmark methodology improves the economics of messaging security for users, enterprises and service providers alike. Best yet, it increases the odds of halting and deterring attacks over time by orders of magnitude. FOUNDING PRINCIPLES Vipul Ved Prakash conceived Vipul’s Razor, and then Cloudmark, Inc. and its global user community, holding four criteria for superior messaging security at the forefront: 1. Preservation of legitimate communications. An issue plaguing previous and competing messaging security solutions continues to be one of discernment: allowing desired or legitimate communications to be delivered efficiently while rapidly detecting and deterring undesired or malicious messages from propagating. When he first undertook the issue, Vipul Ved Prakash was determined that a new approach would keep good messages from being impacted by an anti-spam solution. He succeeded, and Cloudmark technology accomplishes this feat with the greatest speed and accuracy worldwide by employing a trust system to track and rate the feedback of reporters. Because a trusted reporter has to label a message as spam, personal emails and desired newsletters are very rarely mislabeled. In this time-proven employment of social democracy, false reports by those wishing to “trick” the system are not acted upon because they aren’t corroborated by proven users. Finally, Cloudmark has developed the industry’s first mechanism allowing safe, “out of band” unsubscription to newsletters that prevents readers from mislabeling these publications as “spam” in fear of clicking “unsubscribe” links. 2. Self-empowerment. Ved Prakash knew users would be glad to participate in protecting themselves and other well-intentioned messengers from ever-more-serious abuse. By extension, he foresaw that as attacks increased in scale, volume and sophistication, Internet, cable, wireless and other messaging service providers would increasingly need a means of insulating their messaging platforms, network infrastructures and subscriber communities at the network edge. One key idea behind Vipul’s Razor and Cloudmark solutions is the idea of built-in self-protection and reporting mechanisms, keeping costs low while equipping a platform that uses feedback to regulate itself and protect its participating members against spam attacks. Cloudmark solutions are language-agnostic, a main advantage being that trusted reporters evaluate messages in real-time and in native languages, without awaiting translations or being hindered by linguistic or idiomatic nuances. This precludes international providers from having to make sweeping rules that result in legitimate emails being erroneously blocked, a huge source of customer dissatisfaction. Those best qualified to make the call, make it with the built-in quality assurance of a Trust Evaluation System providing checks and balance. 3. Speed & scalability. Ved Prakash sought to ensure that all users in a global community of Cloudmark-equipped users could share information about broadcast/spam attacks in real time. This way, very few are ever subjected to and forced to deal with new threats but the masses, once a message is adequately tagged and detained, are instantly and automatically protected. As spam volumes increase and attacks become increasingly sophisticated, legacy solutions have tended to decrease in accuracy and unfiltered abusive messaging fills message stores, requiring additional investments in servers to store and utilize ever-increasing volumes of misclassified mail. Additionally, the processing of tens of thousands of rules and definitions weighs on the processing servers, delaying the flow of messaging. The Cloudmark methodology leverages human intelligence and collaborative communication at the early, critical juncture where attacks can be squelched without ever proliferating, and extremely high accuracy rates to keep message stores free and clear of “junk.” Rampant population of server rooms and over-burdening of processing components are precluded, and both CAPEX and OPEX minimized. The “back end” of the process – sophisticated fingerprinting and automatic deterring of bad messages – continues to be accomplished with a predictable and easily managed infrastructure, providing customers with moment by moment micro-updates to keep their messaging infrastructures flowing and subscribers inboxes clear. Meanwhile the “burden,” more accurately regarded as a privilege, of stopping new attacks is shared by a community of hundreds of millions of users and providers so that each does relatively and increasingly little even as the front lines of defense grow more stolid for all. 4. End-to-end Economic Improvements. Lest messaging abuse issues deter the use of valuable modes of messaging, Vipul Ved Prakash believes accuracy should be implicit with the help of, but without cost to, protected subscribers. For this reason, innovations described below help to minimize upfront capital, ongoing maintenance and the fallout from errors by messaging security systems at the service provider edge. On the other side of the coin, Ved Prakash believes it should be increasingly incumbent upon sophisticated messaging security platforms to make it more expensive, or technically or financially impossible, to carry out attacks. Rapid detection vastly reduces the base of those attacked, i.e. the pool of potential in which scammers “phish,” while also increasing the odds of being caught red-handed. Phishing attacks, versus traditional spam, rely on great speed—a “get in and get out” approach—that speedy detection makes exponentially less successful. MILESTONES Vipul Ved Prakash perceives the milestones not only of Cloudmark’s success as a company but of the industry’s success in establishing new benchmarks for messaging security as a whole in terms of two categories: a) Technological Advances, and b) Adoption. Technology. From a technology perspective, three key milestones have occurred: The initial development by Ved Prakash of software extensions to previously existing software that allowed users to tag and provide feedback on spam and other unwanted messages; Development of fingerprinting algorithms and a superior methodology for capturing the essence of unwanted communications—spam, newsletters, phishing scams, email-borne viruses, etc.; Creation of a trust system based on consensus (social democracy), capable of regulating and identifying users providing legitimate actionable feedback as well as those aiming to compromise accuracy or game the system. Where other systems reliant on widespread feedback can be subverted by entities submitting incorrect feedback, the Cloudmark system prevents attackers from claiming bad messages are legit, or causing legit communications from being interfered with on the basis of untrustworthy classification; The reputation system leveraged by Cloudmark is based on democracy and “good citizenship.” Users hold their trust ratings in high esteem, and the communication fostered between service providers and trusted reporters introduces a spirit of collaboration to communications that were formerly chiefly adversarial. Adoption. More than simple signposts measuring Cloudmark’s corporate growth, major milestones in the adoption of technology based on Vipul Ved Prakash’s innovation are simultaneously those that promote greater speed and accuracy in global messaging security as a whole: First, systems administrators, open source channels and ISPs adopted and promoted Vipul’s Razor, the open source technology that is the basis of not only Cloudmark solutions but the predominance of anti-spam solutions deployed globally. A source of pride for Ved Prakash, he values acceptance by this community of “those dealing with the problem on a day to day basis.” Initially available for service providers on Unix platforms, this initial adoption by the front lines of messaging security – even as new breeds of threats were evolving and mutating – marked a significant milestone in the Cloudmark reporting mechanism becoming entrenched, and distinguished, globally and elevated Cloudmark in stature among enterprises and service providers The next critical inflection point Ved Prakash cites was the growth of the Cloudmark community to 10,000 protected mailboxes and self-empowered users. At this point, branding and technological momentum had achieved a critical mass sufficient to justify formally founding Cloudmark, Inc. Doing so, obviously, equipped Ved Prakash to advance productizing and take development to the next level—the release of solutions for Outlook and users—while empowering the company’s co-founders to formulate the business development and marketing arms needed to promote continued exponential growth–and in turn, power—of the community of Cloudmark-protected mailboxes. The next milestone being the release and rapid adoption of plug-ins used with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express platforms that significantly increased the number of individual subscribers, once again advancing speed and accuracy through the growth of a sophisticated and trusted reporter community. In December 2001, the system achieved accuracy in the mid-90 percentile range and has not looked back but only improved, despite the increased funding, sophistication and sheer volume backing new attacks. The Outlook/Express plug-in suite continued to propel acceptance through beta and early adoption periods into 2003. During this time, the Cloudmark community and brand advanced considerably, reaching 1,000,000 active reporters by late 2003. The software consistently won industry accuracy awards and acclaim from PC Magazine, PC World, Network Computing, Wired, and a host of messaging platform partners. As the problem bled inward to the service provider edge, with subscribers increasingly, and vocally, looking to ISPs for faster, more credible solutions, Cloudmark’s Service Provider offerings began enjoying rapid uptake in late 2004 and have continued to gain traction, preference and specification by name during the past 18 months. Today, Cloudmark protects 120 million mailboxes in 163 countries. Cloudmark has continued to partner with the leading companies providing mail platforms to build security into messaging systems – Sendmail, OpenWave, Critical Path, IBM, Sun MicroSystems, and others top the list. Cloudmark has witnessed and participated in concentrated, proactive efforts by wireline and cable companies, wireless providers and other ISPs to leverage superior messaging security solutions to sustain greater customer satisfaction and performance statistics. Preference by Service Providers. Where enabling messaging security at the service provider edge is in and of itself a milestone, gaining preference among them involves challenging and evolving “mini-milestones,” the achievement of which delivers on an advanced business plan and market/solution vision. Service providers face a slew of challenges desktop users and even enterprises experience to a far less extent. Whereas spam may be an annoyance to subscribers and a productivity problem within the enterprise, it is a major economic issue for service providers. Chief among the challenges are: infrastructure costs, storage availability, customer support, and churn. By design a carrier-class solution built to handle the entire messaging infrastructure regardless of its girth, Cloudmark’s recent advancements, driven by Ved Prakash’s constant communication with customers, focus specifically on service provider challenges because they carry the economic impact of messaging abuse and, increasingly in subscribers’ minds, the responsibility. In the past twelve months, the company has addressed the following additional issues for service providers: Storage: as regulatory requirements demand that service providers retain messages for longer and longer periods, and competitors offer “unlimited” or “multi-gig” storage, it is critical that storage space not be wasted. Upwards of 90% of all email is spam and Cloudmark has found that legacy systems leave up to 50-70% of bad messages behind. Spam messages tend to be smaller (though image spam is increasing per-message size), resulting in message stores being consumed, currently at rates of 15-25%, with waste. Cloudmark introduced StorageScan to clear this vital resource, reducing capex, relieving the pressure to acquire additional equipment and real estate, and enabling service providers to address competitive threats. SafeUnsubscribe: subscribers fearful of being added to spam lists are loathe to click “unsubscribe,” and instead mislabel a newsletter they no longer desire as “spam.” Cloudmark allows recipients to choose “unsubscribe” within the Cloudmark toolbar without having to click on links within newsletters themselves, providing them with a greater sense of safety and equipping service providers and publishers to better accommodate subscriber preferences. Safe Unsubscribe provides greater visibility and granular control over an issue of growing risk, cost and customer dissatisfaction, and. Reporting and Feedback: Cloudmark developed an automated reporting interface, the Cloudmark Network Feedback System, that allows subscribers to actively participate in the live reporting of messaging threats. It also allows service providers to measure and demonstrate success in blocking spam, phishing and virus attacks, as well as to manage and plan network resources more effectively. The system provides rapid correction of any misclassified message, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing support calls, one of the most expensive elements in the service provider’s operational expense structure. As with all of Cloudmark’s solutions, the efforts of individual reports serve to protect the entire global Collaborative Security Network. Branded User Interface: subscribers are becoming highly aware of the service provider’s “responsibility” to offer them best of breed point solutions for a myriad of applications, including anti-spam, and phishing and virus protection. Cloudmark offers Service Providers the opportunity to co-brand its award-winning and highly regarded Desktop product for additional client-level protection for their subscribers. “Powered by Cloudmark” has become a powerful perception among subscribers, who are delighted to learn their service provider now offers a solution they have been willing to pay for separately. Anti-virus: Viruses have become one of the greatest threats to service provider networks as dissolving borders mean customers can become infected despite traditional security measures. The introduction of bot-nets and zombies, and burgeoning subscriber address books that help to rapidly propagate a virus, make the immediacy of virus detection vital to maintaining network security and to avoid blacklisting by other service provider networks. Cloudmark’s Zero-Hour Anti-Virus accurately identifies and stops viruses and worms within moments of their first appearance in the network, generally hours and sometimes weeks to days before traditional AV providers. Reputation Services and Phishing Protection: Phishing threats directly impact subscribers, their personal security and finances. Subscribers who feel unprotected will leave, increasing subscriber churn. Cloudmark provides the only standalone anti-phishing solution available to service providers for deployment on any Messaging Transfer Agent (MTA) in the network infrastructure. Additionally, an anti-phishing URL data service that provides alerts on confirmed phishing URLs is available to provide real-time information about new attacks. Cloudmark Authority is now integrated into the solutions of service providers of all types, from ecommerce providers and messaging infrastructure solutions providers to Internet access and email services providers. Worldwide, Cloudmark has been deployed by 8 of the top 10 ISPs in Japan, across Europe and, in stealth mode, throughout the US.
At the most basic level, Vipul Ved Prakash invented a technology and collaborative approach to messaging security that gave rise to the fastest, most accurate and universal system deployed around the world today. With speed, accuracy and language-agnosticism translating into savings of millions of dollars and days of downtime, the superior performance and collaborative culture arising from the Cloudmark methodology improves the economics of messaging security for users, enterprises and service providers alike. Best yet, it increases the odds of halting and deterring attacks over time by orders of magnitude.
FOUNDING PRINCIPLES
Vipul Ved Prakash conceived Vipul’s Razor, and then Cloudmark, Inc. and its global user community, holding four criteria for superior messaging security at the forefront:
1. Preservation of legitimate communications. An issue plaguing previous and competing messaging security solutions continues to be one of discernment: allowing desired or legitimate communications to be delivered efficiently while rapidly detecting and deterring undesired or malicious messages from propagating.
When he first undertook the issue, Vipul Ved Prakash was determined that a new approach would keep good messages from being impacted by an anti-spam solution. He succeeded, and Cloudmark technology accomplishes this feat with the greatest speed and accuracy worldwide by employing a trust system to track and rate the feedback of reporters.
Because a trusted reporter has to label a message as spam, personal emails and desired newsletters are very rarely mislabeled. In this time-proven employment of social democracy, false reports by those wishing to “trick” the system are not acted upon because they aren’t corroborated by proven users. Finally, Cloudmark has developed the industry’s first mechanism allowing safe, “out of band” unsubscription to newsletters that prevents readers from mislabeling these publications as “spam” in fear of clicking “unsubscribe” links.
2. Self-empowerment. Ved Prakash knew users would be glad to participate in protecting themselves and other well-intentioned messengers from ever-more-serious abuse. By extension, he foresaw that as attacks increased in scale, volume and sophistication, Internet, cable, wireless and other messaging service providers would increasingly need a means of insulating their messaging platforms, network infrastructures and subscriber communities at the network edge.
One key idea behind Vipul’s Razor and Cloudmark solutions is the idea of built-in self-protection and reporting mechanisms, keeping costs low while equipping a platform that uses feedback to regulate itself and protect its participating members against spam attacks.
Cloudmark solutions are language-agnostic, a main advantage being that trusted reporters evaluate messages in real-time and in native languages, without awaiting translations or being hindered by linguistic or idiomatic nuances. This precludes international providers from having to make sweeping rules that result in legitimate emails being erroneously blocked, a huge source of customer dissatisfaction. Those best qualified to make the call, make it with the built-in quality assurance of a Trust Evaluation System providing checks and balance.
3. Speed & scalability. Ved Prakash sought to ensure that all users in a global community of Cloudmark-equipped users could share information about broadcast/spam attacks in real time. This way, very few are ever subjected to and forced to deal with new threats but the masses, once a message is adequately tagged and detained, are instantly and automatically protected.
As spam volumes increase and attacks become increasingly sophisticated, legacy solutions have tended to decrease in accuracy and unfiltered abusive messaging fills message stores, requiring additional investments in servers to store and utilize ever-increasing volumes of misclassified mail. Additionally, the processing of tens of thousands of rules and definitions weighs on the processing servers, delaying the flow of messaging. The Cloudmark methodology leverages human intelligence and collaborative communication at the early, critical juncture where attacks can be squelched without ever proliferating, and extremely high accuracy rates to keep message stores free and clear of “junk.” Rampant population of server rooms and over-burdening of processing components are precluded, and both CAPEX and OPEX minimized. The “back end” of the process – sophisticated fingerprinting and automatic deterring of bad messages – continues to be accomplished with a predictable and easily managed infrastructure, providing customers with moment by moment micro-updates to keep their messaging infrastructures flowing and subscribers inboxes clear.
Meanwhile the “burden,” more accurately regarded as a privilege, of stopping new attacks is shared by a community of hundreds of millions of users and providers so that each does relatively and increasingly little even as the front lines of defense grow more stolid for all.
4. End-to-end Economic Improvements. Lest messaging abuse issues deter the use of valuable modes of messaging, Vipul Ved Prakash believes accuracy should be implicit with the help of, but without cost to, protected subscribers. For this reason, innovations described below help to minimize upfront capital, ongoing maintenance and the fallout from errors by messaging security systems at the service provider edge.
On the other side of the coin, Ved Prakash believes it should be increasingly incumbent upon sophisticated messaging security platforms to make it more expensive, or technically or financially impossible, to carry out attacks. Rapid detection vastly reduces the base of those attacked, i.e. the pool of potential in which scammers “phish,” while also increasing the odds of being caught red-handed. Phishing attacks, versus traditional spam, rely on great speed—a “get in and get out” approach—that speedy detection makes exponentially less successful.
MILESTONES
Vipul Ved Prakash perceives the milestones not only of Cloudmark’s success as a company but of the industry’s success in establishing new benchmarks for messaging security as a whole in terms of two categories: a) Technological Advances, and b) Adoption.
Technology. From a technology perspective, three key milestones have occurred:
The initial development by Ved Prakash of software extensions to previously existing software that allowed users to tag and provide feedback on spam and other unwanted messages;
Development of fingerprinting algorithms and a superior methodology for capturing the essence of unwanted communications—spam, newsletters, phishing scams, email-borne viruses, etc.;
Creation of a trust system based on consensus (social democracy), capable of regulating and identifying users providing legitimate actionable feedback as well as those aiming to compromise accuracy or game the system. Where other systems reliant on widespread feedback can be subverted by entities submitting incorrect feedback, the Cloudmark system prevents attackers from claiming bad messages are legit, or causing legit communications from being interfered with on the basis of untrustworthy classification;
The reputation system leveraged by Cloudmark is based on democracy and “good citizenship.” Users hold their trust ratings in high esteem, and the communication fostered between service providers and trusted reporters introduces a spirit of collaboration to communications that were formerly chiefly adversarial.
Adoption. More than simple signposts measuring Cloudmark’s corporate growth, major milestones in the adoption of technology based on Vipul Ved Prakash’s innovation are simultaneously those that promote greater speed and accuracy in global messaging security as a whole:
First, systems administrators, open source channels and ISPs adopted and promoted Vipul’s Razor, the open source technology that is the basis of not only Cloudmark solutions but the predominance of anti-spam solutions deployed globally. A source of pride for Ved Prakash, he values acceptance by this community of “those dealing with the problem on a day to day basis.”
Initially available for service providers on Unix platforms, this initial adoption by the front lines of messaging security – even as new breeds of threats were evolving and mutating – marked a significant milestone in the Cloudmark reporting mechanism becoming entrenched, and distinguished, globally and elevated Cloudmark in stature among enterprises and service providers
The next critical inflection point Ved Prakash cites was the growth of the Cloudmark community to 10,000 protected mailboxes and self-empowered users. At this point, branding and technological momentum had achieved a critical mass sufficient to justify formally founding Cloudmark, Inc. Doing so, obviously, equipped Ved Prakash to advance productizing and take development to the next level—the release of solutions for Outlook and users—while empowering the company’s co-founders to formulate the business development and marketing arms needed to promote continued exponential growth–and in turn, power—of the community of Cloudmark-protected mailboxes.
The next milestone being the release and rapid adoption of plug-ins used with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express platforms that significantly increased the number of individual subscribers, once again advancing speed and accuracy through the growth of a sophisticated and trusted reporter community.
In December 2001, the system achieved accuracy in the mid-90 percentile range and has not looked back but only improved, despite the increased funding, sophistication and sheer volume backing new attacks.
The Outlook/Express plug-in suite continued to propel acceptance through beta and early adoption periods into 2003. During this time, the Cloudmark community and brand advanced considerably, reaching 1,000,000 active reporters by late 2003. The software consistently won industry accuracy awards and acclaim from PC Magazine, PC World, Network Computing, Wired, and a host of messaging platform partners.
As the problem bled inward to the service provider edge, with subscribers increasingly, and vocally, looking to ISPs for faster, more credible solutions, Cloudmark’s Service Provider offerings began enjoying rapid uptake in late 2004 and have continued to gain traction, preference and specification by name during the past 18 months. Today, Cloudmark protects 120 million mailboxes in 163 countries.
Cloudmark has continued to partner with the leading companies providing mail platforms to build security into messaging systems – Sendmail, OpenWave, Critical Path, IBM, Sun MicroSystems, and others top the list. Cloudmark has witnessed and participated in concentrated, proactive efforts by wireline and cable companies, wireless providers and other ISPs to leverage superior messaging security solutions to sustain greater customer satisfaction and performance statistics. Preference by Service Providers. Where enabling messaging security at the service provider edge is in and of itself a milestone, gaining preference among them involves challenging and evolving “mini-milestones,” the achievement of which delivers on an advanced business plan and market/solution vision.
Service providers face a slew of challenges desktop users and even enterprises experience to a far less extent. Whereas spam may be an annoyance to subscribers and a productivity problem within the enterprise, it is a major economic issue for service providers. Chief among the challenges are: infrastructure costs, storage availability, customer support, and churn.
By design a carrier-class solution built to handle the entire messaging infrastructure regardless of its girth, Cloudmark’s recent advancements, driven by Ved Prakash’s constant communication with customers, focus specifically on service provider challenges because they carry the economic impact of messaging abuse and, increasingly in subscribers’ minds, the responsibility. In the past twelve months, the company has addressed the following additional issues for service providers:
Storage: as regulatory requirements demand that service providers retain messages for longer and longer periods, and competitors offer “unlimited” or “multi-gig” storage, it is critical that storage space not be wasted. Upwards of 90% of all email is spam and Cloudmark has found that legacy systems leave up to 50-70% of bad messages behind. Spam messages tend to be smaller (though image spam is increasing per-message size), resulting in message stores being consumed, currently at rates of 15-25%, with waste. Cloudmark introduced StorageScan to clear this vital resource, reducing capex, relieving the pressure to acquire additional equipment and real estate, and enabling service providers to address competitive threats.
SafeUnsubscribe: subscribers fearful of being added to spam lists are loathe to click “unsubscribe,” and instead mislabel a newsletter they no longer desire as “spam.” Cloudmark allows recipients to choose “unsubscribe” within the Cloudmark toolbar without having to click on links within newsletters themselves, providing them with a greater sense of safety and equipping service providers and publishers to better accommodate subscriber preferences. Safe Unsubscribe provides greater visibility and granular control over an issue of growing risk, cost and customer dissatisfaction, and.
Reporting and Feedback: Cloudmark developed an automated reporting interface, the Cloudmark Network Feedback System, that allows subscribers to actively participate in the live reporting of messaging threats. It also allows service providers to measure and demonstrate success in blocking spam, phishing and virus attacks, as well as to manage and plan network resources more effectively. The system provides rapid correction of any misclassified message, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing support calls, one of the most expensive elements in the service provider’s operational expense structure. As with all of Cloudmark’s solutions, the efforts of individual reports serve to protect the entire global Collaborative Security Network.
Branded User Interface: subscribers are becoming highly aware of the service provider’s “responsibility” to offer them best of breed point solutions for a myriad of applications, including anti-spam, and phishing and virus protection. Cloudmark offers Service Providers the opportunity to co-brand its award-winning and highly regarded Desktop product for additional client-level protection for their subscribers. “Powered by Cloudmark” has become a powerful perception among subscribers, who are delighted to learn their service provider now offers a solution they have been willing to pay for separately.
Anti-virus: Viruses have become one of the greatest threats to service provider networks as dissolving borders mean customers can become infected despite traditional security measures. The introduction of bot-nets and zombies, and burgeoning subscriber address books that help to rapidly propagate a virus, make the immediacy of virus detection vital to maintaining network security and to avoid blacklisting by other service provider networks. Cloudmark’s Zero-Hour Anti-Virus accurately identifies and stops viruses and worms within moments of their first appearance in the network, generally hours and sometimes weeks to days before traditional AV providers.
Reputation Services and Phishing Protection: Phishing threats directly impact subscribers, their personal security and finances. Subscribers who feel unprotected will leave, increasing subscriber churn. Cloudmark provides the only standalone anti-phishing solution available to service providers for deployment on any Messaging Transfer Agent (MTA) in the network infrastructure. Additionally, an anti-phishing URL data service that provides alerts on confirmed phishing URLs is available to provide real-time information about new attacks.
Cloudmark Authority is now integrated into the solutions of service providers of all types, from ecommerce providers and messaging infrastructure solutions providers to Internet access and email services providers. Worldwide, Cloudmark has been deployed by 8 of the top 10 ISPs in Japan, across Europe and, in stealth mode, throughout the US.
Both “end-users” at-large and providers of messaging services will continue to gain from Cloudmark solutions and Vipul Ved Prakash’s visionary, global innovation. For the former, the Internet, and the inbox, will be safer, ceasing to contain prompts to provide personal ID and financial information to criminals, or prompts to buy stocks at the urging of manipulators. Subscribing to, and unsubscribing from, newsletters will be safer when fear of “unsubscribe” links is no longer necessary. Banks, the PayPals of the world and other trusted financial institutions will be safer as their brands are no longer misappropriated and their customers are not confused with messages from phishers seeking to dupe trusting patrons. Service providers will continue to cut costs, improve subscriber satisfaction and be perceived as good guys for a change as they stamp out the flames of new attacks before they truly ignite. This group, however unsung, stands to benefit the most as two perennial pain points – OPEX and churn – are kept in check, replaced by a spirit of fellowship with subscribers that has heretofore not existed.
Both “end-users” at-large and providers of messaging services will continue to gain from Cloudmark solutions and Vipul Ved Prakash’s visionary, global innovation.
For the former, the Internet, and the inbox, will be safer, ceasing to contain prompts to provide personal ID and financial information to criminals, or prompts to buy stocks at the urging of manipulators. Subscribing to, and unsubscribing from, newsletters will be safer when fear of “unsubscribe” links is no longer necessary.
Banks, the PayPals of the world and other trusted financial institutions will be safer as their brands are no longer misappropriated and their customers are not confused with messages from phishers seeking to dupe trusting patrons.
Service providers will continue to cut costs, improve subscriber satisfaction and be perceived as good guys for a change as they stamp out the flames of new attacks before they truly ignite. This group, however unsung, stands to benefit the most as two perennial pain points – OPEX and churn – are kept in check, replaced by a spirit of fellowship with subscribers that has heretofore not existed.
Vipul Ved Prakash has been a renowned computer scientist and leading innovator in messaging security for nearly a decade. At the age of 18 he founded Sense/Net, a company that bootstrapped Internet connectivity in India by creating an unconventional meta-network of IP tunnels. In 1998, he created "Vipul's Razor," the world's first collaborative spam filtration network that evolved into Cloudmark’s suite of desktop, server and service provider edge solutions. Cloudmark technology has been adopted by more than one hundred million users, garnering international acclaim and coveted industry awards from PC World, PC Magazine, Network Computing, etc. Prior to Cloudmark, Vipul held senior engineering, research and consulting positions at Napster, Silicon Graphics, NIIT, PacificNet, BPL and Infocom. A prolific contributor to the Open Source/Free Software movement, Vipul has authored software for cryptography, number theory, networking, object concurrency, and intelligent scheduling, many of which are included with popular Linux and BSD distributions. Vipul is also a co-author of the "Oribiten Free Software Survey," an EU-sponsored project that was the first successful effort to build a comprehensive empirical model of OS/F participation. The tools and methodologies developed in that survey have become seminal in the emerging field of trans-monetary economics. Vipul is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and academic events on the issues of computing and spam. In 2003, MIT's Technology Review named him as one of the Top 100 Young Innovators in the World. He sits on the board of directors of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, and is a technical contributor to MAAWG and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).
Cloudmark, Inc. 128 King Street Second Floor San Francisco, CA 94107 USA Tel: 1-415-543-1220
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