Sendmail Releases First Implementation of Sender ID for Public Testing.

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Sendmail Continues to Drive Authenticated Email to End Phishing, Spoofing and Spam

Sendmail Inc., the global provider of electronic message management solutions, today released the first implementation of the Sender ID authentication specification for testing. The module is published on the Internet as an open source plug-in to the sendmail MTA, the dominant mail routing platform on the Internet. The announcement is part of Sendmail's Messaging Integrity Pilot Program to accelerate the development and deployment of sender authentication.

The Sender ID protocol is a combination of Meng Wong's Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Microsoft's Caller ID for Email. It is being developed by MARID (MTA Authorization Records In DNS), an IETF working group, and is one of a range of schemes intended to combat email fraud, such as phishing and spoofing as well as spam.

Sendmail has published its open source mail filter, or "milter," based on Sender ID at www.sendmail.net. Under the Sendmail Messaging Integrity Pilot Program, Sendmail will test and assess the impact of this module in today's Internet infrastructure. Sendmail is also actively encouraging all mail and security administrators to begin analyzing the impact of sender authentication on their operations by testing the Sender ID milter released today.

Sendmail is inviting organizations with high-profile brands that send sensitive emails to their customers, such as financial statements, e-commerce notifications or other critical customer communications, to begin testing by authenticating outbound messages. This will enable receiving sites, such as ISPs and enterprises that host email, to begin checking incoming authentication data. By comparing the results of sender authentication with those of traditional spam filtering, recipients can determine how the two technologies work together to stem the tide of unwanted email while guaranteeing the authenticity of the messages received.

"Sendmail's Sender ID milter is a major weapon in the war on spam," said Meng Wong, creator of SPF. "Now, system administrators everywhere can evaluate this promising new technology themselves and easily adapt it to their needs."

"The Sender ID Framework gives mail recipients reliable information about where a message came from and who sent it. This will change the way email is processed and accepted, and give administrators strong new tools to clamp down on forged email," said Craig Spiezle, director of Industry and Business Strategy for Microsoft's Safety Technology and Strategy Group. "We strongly urge all email senders to begin publishing Sender ID records immediately to help promote the deliverability of their mail, to better protect the integrity of their domain reputations and to join the broader industry effort to better protect email users worldwide from spam and phishing scams."

"An open source milter from Sendmail is great news. Sendmail is an excellent vehicle to bring this new technology to the Internet," said Andrew Newton, co-chair of IETF's MARID working group. "The most important thing for everyone to do now is test these approaches in the wild, so that we can understand the real-world implications to a wide-scale roll-out and put an end to forged email."

"In the near future, all legitimate email will have to be authenticated," said Dave Anderson, CEO of Sendmail Inc. "As with credit cards and personal identification, receivers will accept multiple forms of authentication on incoming messages; thus, we want to assure that all of the major proposed solutions work together in the real world."

More information about sender authentication is available in Sendmail's whitepaper, "Evolution of Email," at http://sendmail.com/senderauth.

About the Sendmail Messaging Integrity Pilot Program

Sendmail is actively seeking participants to test the next generation in anti-fraud and anti-spam technologies as a part of Sendmail's Messaging Integrity Pilot Program. Testing will involve assessing the compatibility of various sender authentication protocols with existing email infrastructure elements such as MTAs, forwarding services and mail user clients. The goal is to test authentication with as many of the commonly used packages as possible to identify potential issues in the sender-recipient path that could prevent successful authentication of messages. This testing will ensure that these new technologies are effective, that they can be adopted easily and that senders and recipients can be secure in the knowledge that the infrastructure that they depend upon is ready for sender authentication. For more information on the Messaging Integrity Pilot Program, visit www.sendmail.net.

About Sendmail Inc.

Sendmail Inc. builds secure email systems for large enterprises and service providers who depend on email in their businesses. With proven technology and expertise, Sendmail works with customers to address their most complex messaging challenges. The result is a dependable email infrastructure that is easy to manage and built to grow. The company is headquartered in Emeryville, Calif., with offices and distributors in Europe, Asia Pacific and North America. For more information on Sendmail Inc., visit its Web site at www.sendmail.com, http://www.sendmail.com or call 1-87-SENDMAIL or 1-877-363-6245.

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