Security news
Security news12 March 2004
Sophos PureMessage introduces new spam classification support
Sophos PureMessage for Unix customers can now benefit from a powerful new spam classification feature.
The feature, which is supplied as part of PureMessage's regular technology updates, builds on the superior flexibility of PureMessage to provide users with more information about the type of offer that was detected in the spam message.
The new feature classifies spam messages according to the type of content or offer the email is known to contain, enabling businesses to use different policies for messages within seven specific categories:
- offensive
- scam
- entertainment
- financial
- health
- internet
- other content
Typical uses for this classification information include: a lower tolerance for offensive emails, increased tolerance of relevant business categories, and distinct message handling policies for different categories of messages.
"Using the spam classification feature, companies can adjust PureMessage to take a more or less aggressive stance toward filtering messages within specific categories," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "For instance, many PureMessage customers are less tolerant of offensive email, and this new feature enables them to more aggressively filter vulgar messages whilst maintaining a balanced stance on the filtering of other message classes."
Along with the desire to increase the aggressiveness against offensive messages, companies from specific verticals (for instance healthcare and finance), may have a greater tolerance for messages within their vertical sector. PureMessage now enables businesses to adjust the aggressiveness of their filtering by individual category.
"If you are working for a financial institution, there may be times when you want to receive emails about low cost mortgages as valuable competitive information," continued Cluley. "An alternative scenario is if you are a software company looking to pursue vendors offering discounted versions of your products in spam. Through PureMessage all relevant spam could be collected as evidence."
Other updates included in the latest version of PureMessage include improved detection of spam sent using spam campaign software (also known as "ratware") often used by spammers.
