Clearswift Enhances its Anti-Spam Service to Provide Daily Updates; SpamActive Now Also Available for ENTERPRISEsuite Customers.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 21, 2003

Clearswift, the world leader in managing and securing electronic communications, today announced the launch of its enhanced anti-spam service -- SpamActive. SpamActive is designed to increase detection and prevention of unsolicited e-mail at the gateway. The SpamActive service was originally launched in October 2002, and within a week there was a 216% increase in customer downloads from the Clearswift Web site.

SpamActive is now updated daily and is newly available to ENTERPRISEsuite customers as well as CS MAILsweeper for SMTP customers. ENTERPRISEsuite is a comprehensive management and security solution designed specifically for complex environments.

Clearswift "harvests" thousands of examples of spam from global seed e-mail accounts and accumulates these in two databases. Spam terms and subject lines are routinely extracted from these global databases and are placed on the Clearswift Web site for customers to download. SpamActive can be configured to download the latest database automatically and update e-mail filtering policies. Any incoming e-mails that match the latest spam profiles either immediately trigger the anti-spam policies set by customers, effectively blocking unsolicited e-mail, or are "marked" allowing the user to define local policies to delete or move them to a separate inbox folder.

Because the database is now updated daily, with examples of spam from thousands of sources, this solution specifically targets the very latest attempts from the spammer community. Targeting unsolicited e-mail in this way results in low false positive rates, avoiding instances of legitimate business e-mail inadvertently being blocked.

SpamActive is managed and delivered through the Clearswift ThreatLab Active service. This service is provided exclusively to Clearswift Support customers. In addition to delivering product configuration tips for blocking emerging viruses, ThreatLab Active also provides plug-in tools, which increase functionality and effectiveness in managing and securing electronic communications, for Clearswift solutions.

Gartner reports that spam is rising exponentially (at a rate of 1,000% per year) and says that unless an enterprise takes defensive action, there is an 80% chance that more than half of its message traffic will be spam by 2004.

"The volume of spam e-mail will continue to increase through 2004," said Maurene Caplan Grey, research director at Gartner. "We believe effective management of this unwanted e-mail requires the support of a focused, specialized lab, not unlike an anti-virus lab, where observation, algorithms and heuristics are applied to identify spam messages."

The SpamActive filter service is effective and easy to use, simply requiring the e-mail administrator to download the latest data file, containing updated lists of regional spam. Clearswift's anti-spam filter can be updated and effective with up-to-the-minute spam data within 10 minutes.

The SpamActive service complements Clearswift's proprietary generic spam list and rules set. The rule set, available to customers and prospects who simply choose to evaluate Clearswift's products, allows users to assign sensitivity weightings to spam so that acceptable unsolicited e-mails, such as newsletters, can be allowed within the network and unacceptable items, such as pornography, will be quarantined.

"Spam is the symptom of a much larger issue and with Clearwift's unsurpassed track record in filtering electronic content, we are uniquely positioned to handle this specific problem. For customers who want fail-safe protection against spam, SpamActive provides the most up-to-date data lexicon and profiles available," said Paul Rutherford, chief marketing officer, Clearswift.

About Clearswift

Clearswift is the world's leading provider of software for managing and securing electronic communications, with a 23% share of the global content filtering market. Clearswift delivers the capabilities for organizations to protect themselves against e-mail and Web-based threats, meet legal and regulatory requirements, implement productivity-saving policies and manage intellectual property passing through their network.

The company's expertise lies in establishing and enforcing e-policies. Content security threats include the circulation of inappropriate images and text, spam and oversize files, loss and corruption of data, breaches of confidentiality, as well as viruses and malicious code. Clearswift's software portfolio includes Clearswift MIMEsweeper, a product family for e-mail and Web e-policies and Clearswift ENTERPRISEsuite, a software infrastructure for managing e-policies in complex environments. More information about Clearswift, its products and services is available at www.clearswift.com.

ES, ES ClearPoint(TM), ES ClearSecure(TM), ES ClearEdge(TM), ES ClearBase(TM), ES ClearSurf(TM), CS Bastion II(TM), CS X.400 Filter(TM), CS MIMEsweeper(TM), CS MAILsweeper(TM), CS WEBsweeper(TM), CS e-Sweeper(TM), CS IMAGEmanager(TM) and CS SECRETsweeper(TM) are all registered trademarks of Clearswift.