Openwave And Commtouch Provide Iintegrated Spam Solution

Openwave Systems Inc., the leading provider of independent software products and services for the communications industry, and Commtouch® today announced a collaboration to combat spam and malware for service providers worldwide.

The agreement will integrate Commtouch's Anti-Spam and Zero Hour Virus Outbreak Protection services into Openwave's core adaptive messaging offerings, including Openwave® Email Mx and Openwave® Edge Gx Anti-Abuse. The combined solution - which will be available in the first calendar quarter of 2007 - is designed to deliver complete protection against spam and malware for Openwave's global email systems, which collectively manage 1.3 billion messages a day.

"Commtouch addresses the latest issues in spam control; it's a win-win that Openwave is integrating Commtouch within its messaging anti-abuse solutions," said David Ferris, president and senior analyst, Ferris Research. "This collaboration benefits Openwave's service provider customers because it brings them state-of-the-art spam control."

"As malicious spam attacks continue to evolve and take new form with a sharp rise in image-based spam, service providers need a reliable, innovative anti-abuse solution that offers rapid response and protection against spam attacks on a global level," said David Ratner, vice president of messaging, Openwave. "As a founding member of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), protection against spam is core to our messaging business. With Commtouch, we are strengthening our leadership position in the broadband and mobile markets and now have a trusted collaborator to deliver an integrated, end-to-end anti-abuse solution for service providers worldwide."

Commtouch is leading the industry as one of the first vendors to announce "Image Spam Defense" which protects against the image-based spam that has plagued inboxes over the past year and grown in complexity, confounding traditional content-based filters. Commtouch's patented Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPDâ„¢) technology delivers extremely high spam detection rates and protects against spam and malware attacks in real-time as they are mass-distributed over the Internet. In addition, Commtouch's Zero Hour Virus Outbreak Protection service consistently blocks malware in the earliest minutes of an outbreak. This automated protection solution is crucial when malware is being sent in multiple variants in massive waves that are completed in a matter of hours.

"Over the past year we have seen the nature of spam and malware shift dramatically, requiring an approach that is more preemptive in identifying threats and real-time in responding to attacks," said Gideon Mantel, CEO, Commtouch. "The agreement between Openwave and Commtouch will bring service providers an integrated, innovative solution designed to protect against not only the spam and malware attacks of today, but also safeguard against the threats of tomorrow."

Commtouch technology is content-agnostic, detecting and blocking spam in any language, a distinct advantage for global service providers who cannot risk misclassifying legitimate messages for any of their widely dispersed customer-base. This capability becomes especially important due to cultural differences in global and regional spam that have rendered dictionary-based approaches ineffective.

Openwave leads the industry with its IP-based Adaptive Messaging platform; its suite of adaptive messaging products and solutions, including Email Mx, Edge Gx and the newly launched Rich Mail are designed to address communication service providers' needs for a new class of adaptive messaging services that help them address convergence across landline, mobile and broadband networks. Openwave Edge Gx Anti-Abuse detects and prevents unwanted email before it enters the network and stops infected outbound email. Openwave Email Mx offers communications companies the ability to develop and manage new messaging services in response to evolving subscriber needs. Email Mx also enables service providers to rapidly deploy flexible, standards-based software plug-ins, designed to work with best-of-breed anti-virus and anti-spam solutions.

By Openwave