CUPERTINO, Calif. – May 8, 2007 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced that global e-mail service provider USA.NET is using Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam to significantly improve the detection and blocking of unsolicited e-mail messages, delivering more reliable e-mail services to its customers. As part of USA.NET’s multi-layer antispam approach, Symantec has helped the company achieve a fourfold improvement in the catch rate of image-based spam. Symantec has also helped enhance USA.NET’s protection from spam-borne threats, including viruses, spyware and phishing attempts, minimizing spam-related productivity loss for its customers and reducing the burden on its own e-mail infrastructure. Based in Colorado, USA.NET is the trusted provider of mission critical e-mail services to more than 1,300 corporate customers in more than 120 countries. In addition to offering several levels of hosted Microsoft Exchange and Commercial Messaging Services (CMS), the company provides customers with spam and virus protection, multiple layers of security such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, mobility, and a 99.9 percent service level agreement for guaranteed uptime.“Blocking spam and the potentially serious threats associated with spam-borne viruses are very important to USA.NET and our customers,” said Dan Wills, vice president of operations, USA.NET. “Symantec is instrumental in virtually eliminating spam, which enables us to focus on our mission of delivering high-quality, reliable e-mail services.”
Reducing the Threat of Image-Based Spam
A Symantec customer since 2002, USA.NET was highly successful in detecting and eliminating spam from its customers’ inboxes. However, in 2006, USA.NET experienced a dramatic increase in the generation of image-based spam—unsolicited e-mail that text-based spam filters are unable to catch—which threatened the company’s quality of service and caused an increase in customer complaints.USA.NET upgraded to Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam 6.0.4, which included new enhancements that Symantec analysts developed for detecting image-based spam. Since its implementation, USA.NET has more than quadrupled the catch-rate of image-based spam and customer complaints regarding image spam have ceased.
“Successfully blocking image spam is an important benefit for our customers and a key service differentiator for USA.NET,” said Victor Silva, director of client services, USA.NET. “We have a three-layered approach to detecting and stopping spam, and Symantec is a critical component of our solution.”
Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam has a 99.99 percent accuracy rate with virtually no false positives. In addition, the software protects customers from harmful phishing attempts by detecting phishing e-mails received at more than two million decoy e-mail accounts in Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network. Every day, Symantec updates its filters worldwide via Symantec LiveUpdate to effectively block these messages and reduce the risk of USA.NET’s customers inadvertently giving away personal information to spammers.
Operational Efficiency and Increased Customer Retention
USA.NET’s customers are not the only beneficiaries of more effective detection and elimination of spam. Because image-based spam is five to seven times larger than text-based spam it has an unexpected and costly impact on USA.NET’s e-mail infrastructure, increasing e-mail server processing times and storage space. Symantec has helped the company reduce the processing and storage burden on its infrastructure by as much as 90 percent.
“Our customers hear about the problems that image spam is causing in most companies and they are thankful that it is not affecting them,” said Silva. “It is a valuable benefit for our customers and one of the reasons why they continually renew their service contracts with us.”
About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in infrastructure software, enabling businesses and consumers to have confidence in a connected world. The company helps customers protect their infrastructure, information, and interactions by delivering software and services that address risks to security, availability, compliance, and performance. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has operations in 40 countries. More information is available at www.symantec.com.
About USA.NET
Cited as the Top Player in the Hosted Email Market for 2006 by The Radicati Group, Inc., USA.NET, The Global eMessaging Service Provider®, is the only hosting provider that is SAS 70 Type II Audited, Microsoft Gold Certified, a member of the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program for Exchange 2007, and winner of the 2006 Microsoft Excellence Award for Exchange Hosting Solutions. USA.NET eMessaging solutions are modular and infinitely scalable to ensure customers can grow their business without having to invest additional resources, time or capital into their mission-critical messaging infrastructure. More information can be found at www.usa.net or by calling 1.800.653.0179.
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