"Cloud Cover" for any Email Security Appliance

We're really excited today at Proofpoint about Proofpoint Shield, our latest SaaS email security offering that uses cloud computing techniques to radically reduce inbound connections and spam volume. And it works with any email security appliance.

With spam volumes continuing to grow rapidly after taking a rare break (see my recent post on Spam Volumes Returning to Pre-McColo Levels), "connection management" will be a hot topic -- and pressing problem -- for email administrators once again.

Why is this a big problem? Basically, the vast majority of inbound email connections aren't trying to deliver legitimate business email. On the contrary, they are typically trying to deliver spam -- and lots of it. A huge portion of an enterprise's inbound network bandwidth is taken up by these connections.

And the email security gateways that have to process those connections get bogged down with either (a) accepting all those connections and processing the messages they contain or (b) using CPU cycles and outbound network bandwidth to assess the reputation of those connections so that the bad ones can be blocked or throttled while the good ones are accepted.

As inbound spam volumes grow, organizations that use on-premises email security solutions (like our own Proofpoint Messaging Security Gateway) inevitably have to invest in new infrastructure to keep up.

But with Proofpoint Shield, those same organizations can move their connection management and front-line spam blocking out to the cloud. Not only does Proofpoint Shield handle the resource intensive business of blocking malicious inbound connections, but it uses our machine learning technology to scan the contents of accepted messages as well. Messages that are obviously spam are blocked in the cloud.

The end result is a radically lower volume of email (about 80-90% less in most cases) hitting the on-premises appliances, which now have much more headroom for applying additional anti-spam, anti-virus and policy enforcement to inbound messages. Network bandwidth consumption (both inbound and outbound) is also greatly reduced.

You can find our Proofpoint Shield announcement here. If this is a topic that interests you, you won't want to miss our upcoming live web seminar (March 11, 2009) where we'll talk in general about how to use SaaS and hybrid email security technology to improve security and reduce costs, but also give a good overview of the new product.