Oct 30, 2009 | WebTitan News
WebTitan, a new web filtering solution to help organisations protect their resources and protect employees has been launched by global email and Internet security vendor Copperfasten Technologies. SpamTitan, their leading email security solution currently support thousands of companies worldwide in protecting their organisations against spam and other internet threats. The latest addition to the product portfolio is a powerful web filtering solution that is available in two versions, WebTitan ISO and WebTitan for VMWare.
Popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace allow people to socialise online – whether they are at home, at work, or on the move. The risk is that employees visiting these sites will spend time unproductively. Numerous studies highlight the increasing importance of using content filtering to manage this. One recently reported by the BBC estimates social networking sites could be costing employers up to £130 million per day in lost man hours. There are also legal concerns for employers when employees use their systems to engage in illegal file sharing or exchange pornographic or offensive material.
WebTitan is a comprehensive filtering solution ideally suited to small- and medium-sized businesses looking for a powerful, easy-to-manage and cost-effective solution for managing employee activity online. WebTitan allows businesses to tightly control which websites can be accessed at work and when. WebTitan also adds value by reducing cost, increasing productivity, improving network security and reducing bandwidth demands along with flexible reporting and tight firewall integration.
The product is available in two formats: as a software appliance (WebTitan ISO); and as a virtual appliance (WebTitan for VMWare). Real-time content filtering of images and text and strict application controls help WebTitan to block access to inappropriate content. Another key feature is WebTitan’s ability to reinforce company defences by providing URL filtering of up to 53 customisable categories including 10’s of millions of URL’s. The product uses a cloud-based database and real-time classification system to provide an unmatched combination of accurate and scalable coverage.
“Organisations need to adopt a multi-layered web defence strategy that can protect their users and networks from increasingly sophisticated threats,’ said Ronan Kavanagh , CEO of SpamTitan Technologies. “We were one of the first vendors to offer a virtualised anti-spam appliance for SMBs and now we are one of the first to offer virtualised content filtering. With many significant benefits such as ease of deployment, streamlined redundancy and backup, and the key benefits of scalability and mobility, the adoption of virtual appliances has been ever increasing.’
“Coupled with its virtual aspect WebTitan’s extensive functionality, in-depth reporting and unmatched accuracy sets it apart from all other web filtering solutions,” he added.
The product is available for free download from the WebTitan website. WebTitan offers organisations protection for their data from malware and other internet threats such as viruses, spyware and phishing as well as providing user policy browsing tools to ensure corporate internet policy is adhered to.
WebTitan will be holding a web seminar for customers on to discuss the features and benefits of the WebTitan web filtering solution. To access the seminar, visit the WebTitan website and go to the events section of the home page.
Pricing & Availability
Available immediately, WebTitan ISO and WebTitan for VMware costs from $850 WebTitan licenses are banded offering greater flexibility and based on the number of IP addresses accessing the internet concurrently.
About WebTitan
WebTitan a division of Copperfasten Technologies, the global provider of sophisticated enterprise-level email security solutions, offers small and medium size businesses the most comprehensive protection from email threats, including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, phishing, malware and other unwanted content. WebTitans unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, WebTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure webfiltering solution. WebTitan, a division of CopperFasten Technologies, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland.
Oct 28, 2009 | SpamTitan News
Oct 26, 2009 – Leading Windows Networking resource site, WindowsNetworking.com, announced today that Spam Titan was selected as runner up in the Anti Spam hardware category of the WindowsNetworking.com Readers’ Choice Awards.
“Our Readers’ Choice Awards give visitors to our site the opportunity to vote for the products they view as the very best in their respective category,” said Sean Buttigieg, WindowsNetworking.com manager. “WindowsNetworking.com users are specialists in their field who encounter various solutions for Enterprise Networking at the workplace. The award serves as a mark of excellence, providing the ultimate recognition from peers within the industry.”
“SpamTitan anti-spam software continues to successfully help thousands of companies worldwide to rid users’ inboxes of spam, viruses and other email threats’ said Ronan Kavanagh CEO of SpamTitan Technologies. We are honoured to be recognized by Windows Networking.com and its readers for delivering industry-leading anti-spam products. Being named once again in this award demonstrates our ability to consistently and effectively address today’s top security challenges for a more secure enterprise. We are thrilled to accept this award from such a distinguished group of industry experts.”
WindowsNetworking.com conducts monthly polls to discover which product is preferred by network administrators in a particular category of third party solutions for Enterprise Networking. The awards draw a huge response per category and are based entirely on the visitors’ votes. WindowsNetworking.com visitors can submit their votes for the current Readers’ Award poll in the site’s left-hand bar.
About Spam Titan ISO
SpamTitan antispam provides the most comprehensive solution to email threats on the market today. Our antispam software allows you to create an email appliance, real or virtual server for your gateway offering protection from Viruses, Spam, Malware, Phishing and unwanted content. The solution uses best of breed technologies to provide an easily installed, easily managed and highly secure solution for your email.
SpamTitan ISO is a complete SpamTitan operating system and software suite image. When installed, it will clear any existing operating system, replacing it with its own and the SpamTitan software suite resulting in a dedicated SpamTitan email appliance for your gateway.
Features
- Full SpamTitan OS and software can be downloaded for free as an image file and then burned to CD for installation
- No Operating System Requirements
- Full SpamTitan Software suite including anti-spam, anti-virus, content control, web interface.
- Easy to install, simple to configure, up and running in minutes
- Low maintenance overhead, fully automated updating
- 30 Day Free Support
An impressive aspect of SpamTitan is that SpamTitan can be implemented in two ways : downloaded as an ISO CD-ROM image for installation on a standalone server; or as a virtual machine for VM Ware, regardless of the operating system.
SpamTitan, the global provider of sophisticated enterprise-level email security solutions, offers small and medium size businesses the most comprehensive protection from email threats, including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, Malware and other unwanted content. SpamTitan’s unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software, eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price.
Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland. For further information visit, www.spamtitan.com.
About WindowsNetworking.com
WindowsNetworking.com (http://WindowsNetworking.com) is a Microsoft Windows Networking resource site. It is a leading Enterprise Networking site, attracting over 650,000 Network administrators and specialists a month. The site provides the latest Windows Networking services, articles and tutorials by leading Windows Networking experts, message boards, software listings and product reviews.
WindowsNetworking.com forms part of a group of sites run by TechGenix Ltd., including
http://www.windowsecurity.com, a Windows security resource site;
http://www.msexchange.org, a Microsoft Exchange Server resource site; http://www.msterminalservices.org, a Server Based Computing resource site and http://www.isaserver.org, a Microsoft ISA Server resource site
Oct 22, 2009 | SpamTitan News
SpamTitan has been featured by High Tech Views, a premier publication focused on high tech markets across multiple verticals.This article highlight the experience of a SpamTitan customer HBC who are a large ISP offering managed mail services throughout the US and Canada. The HBC case study titled “ISP Deploys SpamTitan to Filter Email for Thousands of Users” highlights SpamTitans unparalleled protection and easy Administration. Read more
Oct 5, 2009 | Internet Security Updates
Galway,Boston, MA,Oct 2009 – SpamTitan Pinpoints Increased Phishing Dangers Associated with Social Media Networks.
SpamTitan, a producer of email security solutions, has released its report on the dangers of phishing attacks within social media and community networks. Read More
Sep 19, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Galway,Boston, MA,Sep 2009 – SpamTitan has been featured in leading South African web security publication IT Web. SpamTitan was recently selected by WineNet (Wine.co.za) to help rid the South African wine industry of those unwanted pestering mails.
Sep 15, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Galway,Boston, MA,Sep 2009 – SpamTitan has been featured in this years CRN Test Center’s antispam roundup. Antispam products are getting equally as sophisticated as those trying to infiltrate an organization’s network.
Read the full article here
Aug 6, 2009 | SpamTitan News
SpamTitan today announced that the Italian version of SpamTitan is now available. As well as the English language version SpamTitan is now available in 5 other languages, covering more than 100 countries and reaching over one billion potential users. The quarantine report element of the product is now available in 12 languages including English.
The new Italian version of SpamTitan provides a language upgrade for millions of existing users that will now be able to use the product in their own native language. Italian speaking users can log on to their SpamTitan web interface and choose Italian as a language option for the first time, providing them with the reassurance and confidence that using a native language brings. “This announcement clearly demonstrates SpamTitans commitment to building on its position as a leading provider of email gateway security solutions by localizing SpamTitan and growing into new territories,” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO of SpamTitan. “By offering SpamTitan in new languages we are presenting millions of additional email users with the opportunity to access the growing benefits of SpamTitan,” said Kavanagh.
All language versions of SpamTitan are available to download as a 30 day trial from https://www.spamtitan.com. Users visiting the SpamTitan web sites in various languages will be able to download the free 30 day trial from those sites also.
In addition this update includes an update to Clam AV, the new version improves handling of archives and fixes various issues found in previous releases.
In conjunction with this launch and in consideration of further global growth, SpamTitan is announcing that its new website which be going live in August, the new website is designed to better support all of our customers, partners and new business prospects. The new SpamTitan website will facilitate future growth with added functionality and a fresh new look and feel.
Jul 23, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Boston & Galway July 24th 2009 – SpamTitan are delighted to announce that they have once again appeared on the CRN Emerging Vendors List. “SpamTitan anti-spam software continues to successfully help thousands of companies worldwide to rid users’ inboxes of spam, viruses and other email threats’ said Ronan Kavanagh CEO of SpamTitan Technologies. We are honoured to be recognized by CRN and its readers for delivering industry-leading anti-spam products,”. “By moving into the top 30 this year, demonstrates our ability to consistently and effectively address today’s top security challenges for a more secure enterprise.” Review the full emerging security vendors list here.
An impressive aspect of SpamTitan is that SpamTitan can be implemented in two ways : downloaded as an ISO CD-ROM image for installation on a standalone server; or as a virtual machine for VM Ware, regardless of the operating system.
About SpamTitan
SpamTitan, the global provider of sophisticated enterprise-level email security solutions, offers small and medium size businesses the most comprehensive protection from email threats, including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, Malware and other unwanted content.
SpamTitan’s unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software, eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland. For further information visit, www.spamtitan.com.
Jul 23, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Boston & Galway, MA, July 24th 2009 – In this ‘PC Actual’ review of SpamTitan’s Anti-Spam Software, SpamTitan scored a excellent 8.4 out of 10 and was highly recommended for businesses of all sizes. PC Actual is the second best selling IT magazine in Spain and the most prestigious in terms of technical range.
Full article is available here (please note this article is in Spanish).
The article highlighted certain SpamTitan features as being particularly beneficial to small and medium businesses. Firstly the benefit of having two antivirus engines (Kaspersky and Clam) included in the product was seen as a significant benefit. This double anti-virus protection provides piece of mind and comes as a standard part of SpamTitan at no extra charge.
Another important feature mentioned was the fact that SpamTitan is a fully automated anti-spam solution, this is a big advantage to IT Administrators in terms of ease of management and time saving. The surveys closing statement is ‘SpamTitan is a highly recommended solution to help you forget about Spam forever’.
Jun 16, 2009 | TitanHQ Partner News
Boston, MA and Galway, Ireland, June 8, 2009– SpamTitan are delighted to announce they will once again be partnering with VMWare in an exciting new initiative offering on demand applications in the cloud.
“App on Demand” will allow customers to create, on demand, a SpamTitan virtual appliance in the cloud. By simply clicking a link, a SpamTitan virtual appliance will be generated for them in the cloud whereby they will be able to log on and explore their own SpamTitan application. Marrying virtual appliances with advanced cloud computing technology brings to the market a new product delivery method. Available through VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace, the App on Demand offers customers the ideal method to look at a potential solution and also experience the power of virtual cloud computing in action.
‘The SpamTitan VMware relationship continues to allow us to bring original and innovative solutions to our customers’ says Ronan Kavanagh CEO of SpamTitan. “This latest initiative is truly leading edge and will culminate in SpamTitan offering customers the opportunity to use the product in the cloud, not in the SAAS model but as their own dedicated on demand application benefiting from the redundancy, scalability and failover associated with virtualization and cloud computing.”
SpamTitan for Vmware was launched in 2006, it is a complete operating system and software suite designed to run on VMware. Using VMware®, this enables businesses to run SpamTitan on any server irrespective of the operating system. When companies deploy SpamTitan using Vmware they enjoy all the benefits of virtualization. For small businesses this gives high availability, performance and the reliability of VMware with cost-effective packages designed for small IT environments. For Medium and Enterprise Businesses the solution allows for increased IT control through service level automation, dramatically reducing capital and operating costs and maximizing IT efficiency.
According to Kavanagh the drivers behind the uptake of cloud computing won’t change in 2009, with cost and environmental savings being the key motivators. ‘This is a very exciting time for SpamTitan’ explains Kavanagh, “we see this as the next generation deployment phase for SpamTitan. This initiative will allow us to offer even more flexibility to our customers as well as the increased efficiency and low cost that cloud computing will bring. We have always been innovative in our offerings this is bringing innovation to a next level. “
For further information on the App on Demand initiative please visit VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace at
http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/156223
About SpamTitan
SpamTitan, the global provider of sophisticated enterprise-level email security solutions, offers small and medium size businesses the most comprehensive protection from email threats, including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, Malware and other unwanted content. SpamTitan’s unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software, eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland. For further information visit, www.spamtitan.com.
Jun 9, 2009 | SpamTitan News
SPF Is Not a Silver Bullet for the Prevention of Spam
SpamTitan BOSTON, MA and GALWAY, IRELAND–(Marketwire – June 8, 2009) – SpamTitan, a leading producer of email security solutions, today announced the results of its industry survey of some 500 users of email security solutions exposing several misconceptions around Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
To dispel any misleading references of SPF’s use, it is important to define SPF and its key purpose — an anti-forgery approach in which the Internet domain of an e-mail sender can be authenticated for that sender, thereby discouraging spam mailers who routinely disguise the origin of their e-mail, a practice known as e-mail spoofing.
SpamTitan’s recent survey uncovered that some 43% of small and medium size businesses (SMBs) were under the misconception that SPF is a method that can be used to stop spam from being sent using unauthorized domain names. Approximately 52% of organizations surveyed were not aware that SPF can only stop spammers from forging the "From" field in the e-mail and that SPF does not stop spammers from sending e-mails from a domain of which it is a member.
Read the full article here
May 19, 2009 | Internet Security Updates
BOSTON, MA and GALWAY, IRELAND — 05/18/09 — SpamTitan, a leading producer of email security solutions, today announced the results of its global industry survey of just over 500 users of email security solutions.
The results clearly show that email security threats such as SPAM, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, Malware are at the forefront of operational challenges facing small and medium size businesses (SMBs).
The survey also shows that the SMB market acknowledges that an economic dip is the best time to make innovative IT investments. SMBs are taking action, and recognize that a re-evaluation of their current email security and other office technology solutions is a worthwhile endeavour in order to optimize business operations and reduce costs. During this economic downturn, SMBs that have the foresight to make the right type of IT investments will have a better ability to gain a competitive edge and further differentiate themselves from the industry giants.
Read the full article here.
Apr 14, 2009 | Internet Security Updates, TitanHQ in the News
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Mar 5, 2009 | SpamTitan News
Boston, MA and Galway, Ireland, March 2, 2009– SpamTitan, a leading producer of email security solutions, today announced the availability of SpamTitan CMC, a cluster management configuration (CMC) for best in class email security solutions targeted at helping small and medium sized enterprises.
SpamTitan CMC, configured to allow the clustering of multiple nodes for both redundancy and to increase total system capacity, provides enhanced monitoring and autonomic failover capabilities. It ensures data is always available, even in the event that a node is turned off or unavailable for any reason. The cluster can be managed through a single interface by the administrator proving centralized reporting and end user digests for all email activity.
For centralized management, SpamTitan CMC allows the customer to have complete control over their configuration and policy across the cluster and the ability to share the “load” across all cluster nodes so that administrators can change policy or access any message received across the cluster from any individual node. The cluster can be managed through a single interface by the administrator, allowing the administrator to attain centralized reporting and end user digests. For remote locations, SpamTitan CMC can span geographies to facilitate redundancy across sites.
SpamTitan CMC ensures the optimum use of resources and avoids queues building up on any one appliance through loadbalancing using MX records or any 3rd party IP load balancer,. Customers no longer have to worry about extending their resources such as sending too much mail to one appliance.
“We are excited to announce the SpamTitan CMC and finally provide the SBM market high performance email security solutions with advanced clustering capabilities at an affordable price, stated Ronan Kavanagh, SpamTitan President and CEO. “Our SpamTitan CMC offers enterprise class functionality including instant scalability, failover and load balancing, all of which can be achieved very simply via a single screen web interface.”
The SpamTitan CMC is priced right for small and medium sized enterprises. The price for a 50 user license and the SpamTitan CMC for 2 nodes is priced at $775. Existing customers with a 100 user license (priced at $550) pay only $275 for a 100 user SpamTitan CMC.
About SpamTitan
SpamTitan, the global provider of sophisticated enterprise-level email security solutions, offers small and medium size businesses the most comprehensive protection from email threats, including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, Malware and other unwanted content. SpamTitan’s unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software, eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland. For further information visit, www.spamtitan.com.
Mar 3, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Boston & Galway, MA, March 3 2009 –
This article by Ronan Kavanagh discusses the current trend toward green policies within organizations. It highlights the
environmental and business benefits of IT Virtualisation.
Read the full article here
Mar 2, 2009 | TitanHQ Partner News
Boston, MA, Mar 02, 2009– SpamTitan, a leading producer of email security solutions, today announced it has been awarded “VMware Ready” certification—indicating that its software is safe, supported, enterprise-ready and fully VMware compatible. The SpamTitan enterprise-level email security solution is well known for its zero-overhead administration, ease-of-management, high performance and extensive security features.
SpamTitan customers report several benefit from using virtualization which include an immense cost savings, rapid deployment and provisioning, simplified change management, easy backup and disaster recovery. VMWare’s Virtual Appliance Program is designed to ensure that products like that from SpamTitan are reliable, supported, enterprise-ready, and fully compatible with VMware’s industry-leading virtualization platform. VMware validated SpamTitan by doing the required testing to verify the SpamTitan email security solution works with the VMware Infrastructure and has all of the necessary documentation to assist new users in either evaluating the virtual appliance or setting it up for production use.
About SpamTitan
SpamTitan, the global provider of sophisticated enterprise-level email security solutions, offers small and medium size businesses the most comprehensive protection from email threats, including SPAM, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, Malware and other unwanted content. SpamTitans unique approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software, eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and capability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland. For further information visit, www.spamtitan.com.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2007 revenues of $1.3 billion, more than 120,000 customers and nearly 18,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) and on the web at www.vmware.com.
Feb 23, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Boston & Galway, MA, February 23, 2009 – This article discusses the growing adoption of virtualisation not just in enterprise but among SMB’s. The article highlights SpamTitans solutions specifically built to run on this platform.
To read the full article by Stephanie Jordon (Editor – Messaging News) titled ‘ Options grow for Virtualised Environments ‘ click here
Feb 13, 2009 | TitanHQ Partner News
Boston, MA, February 13, 2009– SpamTitan are delighted to announce that due to enormous demand for our award winning virtual email gateway appliances we have recruited the leading South African company Robinson Distribution to distribute our product in South Africa and Africa.
Dirk Robinson, CEO of Robinson Distribution commented “We have seen the progress of SpamTitan internationally for some time now and are delighted to be in a position to drive sales through our reseller base in South Africa and Africa "
“We are delighted to announce our new distribution partner Robinson Distribution ” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO of SpamTitan Technologies. “SpamTitan, has seen demand steadily growing for its products, in particular the SpamTitan Virtual Appliance designed to run on the VMware suite of products. Although we already have customers in South Africa and Africa, by partnering with Robinson Distribution we can reach out even further to the market so that more organisations can deploy our comprehensive and flexible email security solution in the knowledge that they will be supported by a local trusted partner ” .
About Robinson Distribution
Robinson Distribution was founded in 1999, specialising in business Critical solutions for South Africa and Africa. They offer a selection of only the best solutions from reputable suppliers with the ability to provide excellent service and support to South Africa and Africa. Robinson Distribution have established themselves as one of the top distribution companies in South Africa.
About SpamTitan
SpamTitan is one of the first companies on the market to offer a virtual email appliance. Our solutions offer best-of-breed technologies to provide the highest levels of security for email. Our products are available globally and free to download from the SpamTitan website. For further information please see www.spamtitan.com
Feb 11, 2009 | SpamTitan News
Boston, MA, February 12, 2009– In a recent review by CRN magazine SpamTitan scored an outstanding 4 stars. The article recommended the product as a "comprehensive and flexible email security solution that will appeal to many firms". In the review CRN rated SpamTitan highly on ease of deployment, flexibility and the ability to offer a scaleable email security solution.
An aspect of SpamTitan, which greatly impressed the reviewer, is that SpamTitan can be implemented in several ways : downloaded as an ISO CD-ROM image for installation on a standalone server; or as a virtual machine for VM Ware, regardless of the operating system.
The full review can be read here .
Jan 26, 2009 | TitanHQ News
Boston, MA, January 26, 2009– SpamTitan, a leading producer of email security solutions, today announced exceptionally strong year-end results for 2008, exceeding revenue goals, increasing sales by 140% over 2007, and remaining profitable for the 3rd straight year.
Reporting steady growth year over year, SpamTitan continues to deliver comprehensive email security solutions focused on meeting the demands of small and medium size businesses. Additionally, SpamTitan solutions are gaining increasing adoption from organizations providing Software as a Service (SAAS) offerings due to its ease of use, success in overcoming the rigorous malware environments as well as IT network security challenges, and affordability.
The results of a Q4 2008 survey of some 250 respondents provided further evidence of SpamTitan’s customer-centric approach with an 87% full product satisfaction rating. The high adoption rate of SpamTitan’s virtualization, enterprise class email security solutions also proved to be a key factor in the companies’ 2008 success with over 60% of SpamTitan deployments now being on virtual appliances.
“This has been a tremendous year for the company as evident from our rapid expansion in new markets and customer acquisitions. The appetite for quality email security products continues to grow as well as the adoption of virtual appliances that are now not only seen as an accepted product delivery method but the preferred way to receive product according to our survey results and customer experience,” stated Ronan Kavanagh, SpamTitan President
Other notable achievements include the prestigious antivirus software certification from West Coast Labs, the highest level of VMware certification of SpamTitan’s virtual appliance email security solutions, and the 4-Star Rating from SC Magazine Review that highlighted SpamTitan’s ease of use, ease of management and incredible value for money.
Jan 22, 2009 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Virtualization used to be a somewhat esoteric technology deployed mainly in large-scale data center server consolidation projects, however, with VMware and other virtualization vendors releasing products specifically geared for the small and mid-sized business market (and priced accordingly), virtualization is now within the reach of all.
Read the full article here
Jan 15, 2009 | Internet Security Updates
Galway 15 Jan 2008 – In keeping with their strategy of promoting and educating the market on the benefits of virtual appliances, SpamTitan, Irelands only "VMready" classified provider of virtual appliances today announced the release of a new whitepaper entitled "Virtualization and Virtual Appliances" The paper outlines the tremendous advantages of virtualisation and in particular the deployment of software based virtual appliances. The abstract is as follows:
In today’s world, everybody in looking for ways to save – to save money, to save time and to save energy – and "do more with less" has become a common mantra in modern businesses.
Virtualization is now firmly embedded in the enterprise mainstream. By moving away from the one-application-per-server deployment model, enterprises have been able to reap a broad set of benefits including cost reductions, improved availability and increased agility. However, many small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) continue to view virtualization as an enterprise-only technology that would not be viable in their smaller organizations – and that is a misconception.
This white paper explains how SMBs can leverage virtualization in order to make maximum use of their resources and maintain their competitive edge – and why they need to consider deploying virtualization sooner rather than later.
Dec 18, 2008 | SpamTitan News
Kein Müll in die Postfächer
von Thomas Bär
18. Dezember 2008
Kein Unternehmen kann heute einen E-Mailserver betreiben, ohne dabei zugleich auch eine geeignete Antispam-Lösung einzusetzen. Die Abwehr von Spam-Nachrichten ist eigentlich eine typische Leistung des Providers. Doch was tun, wenn ein eigener Mailserver mit externer Internetanbindung ans Netz geht? Wir stellen eine Lösung vor, die in diesen Fällen helfen kann.
Read the full article here
Dec 8, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Read the full article here
Nov 17, 2008 | SpamTitan News
Boston, MA and Galway, Ireland – November 12, 2008 – SpamTitan, an e-mail security software provider, announces today that it has released its version 4.14 with an API (Application Programming Interface) that allows greater support through remote management. SpamTitan’s software, which is available in both a VMware-certified virtual version as well as an ISO version, is now offering additional support to its ISP (Internet Service Provider) customer base.
ISPs who use the SpamTitan solution will be able to easily manage a large number of domains by configuring their programming interface via SpamTitan’s API without needing to go through a UI (user interface). ISPs will have the opportunity to hook the addition of domains directly into the SpamTitan API in order to automate the signing up of new clients to their mail filtering service. This continues SpamTitan’s roll out of features for the ISPs from the ability to manage individual customers domains and whitelists to viewing quarantine reports in 11 different languages.
Business continuity provider Low Cost Host Ltd., based in the UK, has been very successful with SpamTitan’s security solutions. CTO Phillip Baker states: "Automation & integration is the key to both customer satisfaction and low overheads for pretty much any ISP-oriented business in the marketplace today. The addition of API functionality that allows both ourselves and our licencing customers to work on complete integration of SpamTitan into existing automated business processes is a welcome enhancement and shows a commitment by SpamTitan not only to evolving the product but to making our customers’ businesses a success."
SpamTitan’s CEO Ronan Kavanagh explains, “we have had such tremendous response from ISPs with the functionality of this software, especially at its very accessible price point. We are very pleased to now offer greater automated support, which develops into lower product management overhead and thus lower total cost of ownership for our partners. “
As the first virtual appliance focused on the ISP market, SpamTitan is seeing incredible reaction from their savvy client base. The virtues of this technology make significant improvements to the way business is managed and automated. This next level of service through an automated API will once again allow a fresh, progressive manner of doing business.
Sep 11, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Low-cost, easy-to-deploy software defeats spam at Penn State University.
Universities and colleges often face a more challenging IT and network security challenge than typical corporate networks. With the rise of peer-to-peer (P2P), file sharing and MP3 trading, campuses have become a haven for viruses and spyware. By nature, these networks are fairly open and unsegmented. Penn State University is no exception.
Read the full article here
Sep 2, 2008 | SpamTitan News
Boston, MA and Galway, Ireland- Sept 15, 2008 – Executives from leading email security software developer SpamTitan will be available at VMworld in Las Vegas this week to demonstrate their e mail security virtual appliance. VMworld is held from Sept 15 -18 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas and brings together leaders in the virtualization arena.
SpamTitan was the first virtual email security software to be certified by VMware. With a long-standing connection to VMware, SpamTitan CEO Ronan Kavanagh will be right inside the VMware booth in the Solutions Exchange at VMworld on Wednesday Sept 17 from 9AM to 1PM to show their software and the high level features such as outbound scanning, OCR (optical character recognition), and scalability that have been so attractive especially to the SMB market. Core to the demonstration will be to illustrate the significant advantages derived from the use of virtual appliances in real world settings.
SpamTitan’s Ronan Kavanagh is proud of the VMware connection and stated “VMware has been a wonderful partner since we launched our virtual appliance in 2006 – with our extensive background in virtualization and as one of the first producers of virtual email appliances, it has been a natural fit to partner with VMware. This demonstration at VMworld will be a wonderful way for IT professionals to learn more about the many benefits of virtual appliances and to connect with leaders such as VMware.”
SpamTitan is available in both an ISO and as the popular SpamTitan for VMware version and is installed in minutes by download. SpamTitan immediately protects email users against spam, viruses, Trojans, Phishing, and malware, other threats.
Jul 9, 2008 | SpamTitan News
The Challenge of Spam for SMBs
By Drew Barrows
July 8, 2008
When the number of unwanted messages in Phil Mansfield’s email inbox that was touting things like prescription medication, mortgage loans, university diplomas and bank loan offerings outnumbered legitimate business correspondence by as much as five to one, he knew something had to be done about the spam flooding his inbox.
Read the full article here
Jul 4, 2008 | TitanHQ in the News, TitanHQ News
CRN Magazine this month included SpamTitan in both its Emerging Vendors and Top Emerging Security Vendors showcases.
Over the years CRN has looked at emerging vendors from the IT industry across multiple disciplines and highlights those it feels offer most in terms of innovation, value, support, technical superiority and, importantly for the channel, margin. In looking at these products it is comparing them to the larger brand offerings and identifying alternatives that the channel can look to, products it sees that can meet the main stream brands head on but because of a sharper design focus on the SMB market requirements often provide a better overall fit than that offered by more established vendors.
This year SpamTitan was included in both its overall list of Emerging Vendors and also its Top Security Emerging Vendors. “It is fantastic to be included by CRN in its Emerging Vendor list” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO of SpamTitan. “CRN is a well established and trusted name among the reseller and vendor community. Over the years this list has highlighted some excellent companies who really do offer not only viable alternatives to the mainstream, but solutions that can be better suited to SMB end users and the resellers that provide them. Resellers see this in terms of support they get, really getting to know the people in our organization who build and maintain the products. They also see it in their pockets, because our products are not overly distributed we can offer great margins, far in excess of what they are able to achieve when pitted against other resellers all selling the same products from some of the larger brands. Their customers are also happy. Because of the closeness we have to end users, their direct feed back coupled with the agility of our product designers allow us to almost tailor solutions for our customers.”
SpamTitan is installed in minutes by download and immediately protects email users from today’s continuous bombardment of malware, viruses, spam and other threats. SpamTitan includes dual antivirus protection, including Kaspersky Labs, 99% anti spam protection, content filtering, in and out bound email scanning, LDAP integration, a full reporting suite and an automated updating process to ensure management overheads are kept to a minimum.
With an increasing global customer base stretching from Europe to Asia and the US, SpamTitan has received the highest marks after undergoing numerous rigorous tests by accredited independent test labs such as Westcoast Labs among others. SpamTitan has proven its solution to be of the highest technical standards – reaching an enterprise class level of functionality but affordable for small and medium sized businesses.
See CRN here
Jun 9, 2008 | SpamTitan News
SpamTitan scored an outstanding 4 stars in the review by Peter Stephenson who advised readers to "take a look at this offering". Highlighting SpamTitan’s ease of use, its ease of management and its value for money Stephenson described SpamTitan as a "sophisticated spam filter and spam management tool". Of particular note was the fact that this was the only virtual appliance on show with the reviewers which added greatly to the simplicity of system set up. Also singled out for praise was the accompanying SpamTitan documentation and product support both scoring the highest possible star ratings.
The full review can be read here
Jun 3, 2008 | TitanHQ News, TitanHQ Partner News
SpamTitan have opened up sales and technical support offices in Poland. The offices, run with local partners Ideatronic,will provide local sales and technical support for the growing Polish customer base. SpamTitan, already available in Polish has seen demand steadily growing for its products, in particular the SpamTitan Virtual Appliance designed to run on the VMware suite of products. Marcin Dragan, CEO of Ideatronic, who’s company have partnered with SpamTitan to operate the Polish office commented "we have been working with SpamTitan for some time now and are delighted to be in a position to drive sales in Poland and provide the support locally to ensure a continued satisfied customer base"
Full details can be found at
www.spamtitan.pl
May 20, 2008 | TitanHQ News, TitanHQ Partner News
SpamTitan are delighted to announce that due to enormous demand for our award winning virtual email gateway appliances we have launched the local Israeli SpamTitan website, www.spamtitan.co.il , and opened up a sales and support office in Israel. The website will allow our customers direct access to local email and phone technical and sales support. The office will be managed by the F1 Computings Solution Group, a veteran of the Israeli IT security industry. “We have seen the progress of SpamTitan both internationally and here in Israel so felt it was now necessary to develop a full presence here to further expand business.” Said Shlomi Amoyal of F1 Computing.
Full information can be found at www.spamtitan.co.il
May 19, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
"Virtualization: Savings Are Not Guaranteed" by By Jack M. Germain, LinuxInsider 16/05/08
"Deployment issues are always a key factor in transitioning from hardware to software virtualization, according to SpamTitan’s CEO Ronan Kavanagh. …"
The full atricle can be read at:
May 16, 2008 | TitanHQ News, TitanHQ Partner News
SpamTitan, azienda irlandese produttrice di software antispam ha deciso di potenziare la propria presenza sul mercato italiano. Oltre all’apertura di una sede anche nel nostro Paese, la società ha inagurato un nuovo sito Internet, in italiano, che permette agli utenti di scoprire e comprendere a fondo i benefici dell’offerta. Gli utenti possono così trarre utili informazioni riguardo SpamTitan e il suo portfolio di prodotti, usufruendo di un servizio di supporto locale in grado di intervenire in qualsiasi momento, via telefono oppure via mail nonché di un servizio di e-commerce per l’acquisto online.
In dettaglio, SpamTitan offre la possibilità di liberarsi dallo spam e dai virus che si diffondono tramite e-mail con investimenti estremamente contenuti, avendo contemporaneamente a disposizione un motore antispam e antivirus efficacissimo e adatto a scalare dalle poche decine di utenti fino alle numerose migliaia delle grandi aziende e degli Isp, che riescono con SpamTitan a gestire un numero di domini illimitato. Due le versioni del prodotto: una Iso e l’altra dedicata alle macchine virtuali certificata VmWare. Grazie all’Antivirus (ClamAv e Kaspersky Labs ) e grazie a un’analisi multilivello la soluzione identifica fino al 98% dello spam.
Come partner distributivo la società ha confermato DotForce: la qualità della relazione e i risultati estremamente positivi hanno spinto SpamTitan a dare seguito al progetto pilota italiano aprendo nei prossimi mesi altre sedi nei diversi Paesi europei.
http://www.vnunet.it/it/vnunet/news/2008/04/16/apre_in_italia_spamtitan
May 16, 2008 | TitanHQ Partner News
SpamTitan, società irlandese che sviluppa l’omonimo software antispam ha aperto una sede in Italia, a Milano, da cui offrirà un servizio di supporto locale via telefono ed e-mail e un servizio di di vendita online dei suoi prodotti. La filiale nasce dalla collaborazione con il distributore DotForce – un progetto pilota che sarà seguito per aprire sedi in altri Paesi europei nei prossimi mesi – e sarà guidata da Fabrizio Bressani.
SpamTitan mette a disposizione un motore antispam e antivirus adatto a scalare da poche decine a migliaia di utenti di grandi aziende e Internet Service Provider, permettendo di gestire un numero di domini illimitato e di offrire un servizio di qualità a ridotti costi di gestione. E’ disponibile in due versioni, una ISO e l’altra dedicata alle macchine virtuali VMWare, entrambe dotate di un doppio motore antivirus (ClamAV e Kaspersky Labs ) e capaci di identificare fino al 98% dello spam grazie a un’analisi multilivello.
"SpamTitan è un prodotto unico per rapporto qualità/prezzo e per questo adatto a tutte le aziende, indipendentemente dalle loro dimensioni, che vogliono liberarsi una volta per tutte dello spam – dichiara in una nota Bressani -. Le alternative attuali sono appliance estremamente costose e non adatte per questo motivo alle PMI, così diffuse e numerose in Italia”.
http://www.cwi.it/showPage.php?id=19801&template=articoli
May 16, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
The article entitled "Virtual Appliances – The Evolution of a Gold Standard" discusses the emergence of virtual appliances as a new solution delivery vehicle and contrasts this with physical appliance solution deployment. It outlines some of the advantages derived from the use of virtual appliances including testing, back up, redundancy and scalability. The points are backed up with a case study from Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics.
The full article can be seen in ISACA Journal Vol 3 2008
About ISACA
Since its inception, ISACA has become a pace-setting global organization for information governance, control, security and audit professionals. Its IS auditing and IS control standards are followed by practitioners worldwide. Its research pinpoints professional issues challenging its constituents. Its Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) certification is recognized globally and has been earned by more than 55,000 professionals since inception. The Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) certification uniquely targets the information security management audience and has been earned by more than 7,000 professionals. It publishes a leading technical journal in the information control field, the Information Systems Control Journal. It hosts a series of international conferences focusing on both technical and managerial topics pertinent to the IS assurance, control, security and IT governance professions. Together, ISACA and its affiliated IT Governance Institute lead the information technology control community and serve its practitioners by providing the elements needed by IT professionals in an ever-changing worldwide environment.
https://www.isaca.org/template.cfm
Apr 18, 2008 | TitanHQ in the News
SpamTitan will have representation at the forthcoming InfoSecurity Europe Show in the Olympia in London on the 23rd and 24th of April. If you would like to arrange to meet with us at this show please email info@spamtitan.com
Apr 8, 2008 | SpamTitan News
SpamTitan this week launched an Italian language version of their website along with local support. Available at www.spamtitan.it , the site will allow Italians to explore the benefits of both Spamtitan ISO and SpamTitan for VMware in their own language. The site will also provide Italian sales and technical support via local phone numbers and email addresses. "SpamTitan has been performing very well in the Italy and we felt the time was right to dedicate resources to support this market. This will allow our customers and resellers the local access they need to both purchase the products and also maintain them to ensure they perform to the optimum levels into the future" said Ronan Kavanagh, Sales Director with SpamTitan. "This is the first of many local support centers we will be rolling out over the coming months" he concluded.
www.spamtitan.it
Spamtitan – Sede Italiana
Via Zuretti, 25
20125 Milano
Email
Per ogni richiesta contattare info@spamtitan.it o recarsi alla pagina Contatti dove potrete sottoporci i vostri quesiti.
Telefono
Per contattare la Sede Italiana di SpamTitan telefonicamente:
+39 02 45481521
+39 02 45481160
Apr 2, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
SpamTian has featured in the latest edition of Campus Technology in an article by Rama Ramaswami entitled "Protecting the Oblivious". This very interesting article looks at the steps taken by a number of education establishements in protecting their digital assets. A selection of the article can be read below, the full atricle can be read in the April 2008 edition of Campus technology or at the following link: http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/60297_1/
"Two universities that have had considerable success with e-mail appliances are Penn State and Georgia Southern University. At Penn State, the Intercollegiate Athletics department, which has more than 300 e-mail users, used an innovative technique to filter spam: It isolated itself from the university’s centralized IT system and installed its own open source appliance. That’s because Phil Mansfield, systems administrator for the department, discovered that the university’s in-house anti-spam software, installed directly on the Microsoft Outlook e-mail server, shut down antivirus functions completely when there were problems with the server. This affected e-mail performance for the entire athletics group.
"I believe that threats come from a wide variety of sources, but e-mail is the main vector," says Mansfield. "It’s the easiest to attack and is always allowed through the firewall. To supplement the existing antivirus software already installed, we searched out a front-end gateway SMTP solution. We were looking for a solution that would provide greater spam filtration as well as free up the workload of the back-end provider."
Mansfield opted for SpamTitan, an open source, easy-to-use system that offers what he calls "enterprise-class features at a very affordable price." The minimal investment required gained him a quick signoff on the purchase from university officials. With installation time taking less than one hour for 500 licenses, and a 90 percent increase in spam filtration in the few months that the system has been in use, SpamTitan provided "results from day one," says Mansfield."
Feb 7, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
SpamTitan has continued with our strong Technology Alliance Partnership with VMware by being featured in Vmware’s Customer ISV Success Story. The success story outlines SpamTitan’s continued progress due to the developement of the SpamTitan for VMware vitrual appliance and features some of the many milestones we have passed since it’s launch.
The full piece can be downloaded
Hightlights of the Success story can be seen below:
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Created a new revenue stream by developing the SpamTitan for VMware virtual appliance; 50 percent of revenues now come from the virtual appliance
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Experiencing a 2:1 virtual appliance to hardware appliance customer adoption rate.
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Cut sales cycle time by 50 percent and reduced cost of sales by 40 percent
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Reduced support overhead per customer by 40 percent as virtual appliances do not pose hardware compatibility and configuration issues typically experienced with hardware appliances
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Increased customer evaluation numbers by a factor of 10 at no cost,thanks to the virtual appliance being available online and quick and easy to download
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Improved market penetration with entry into North America, South America, Asia, Australia and the Middle East
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Ten fold increase in channel partners as product education and evaluation costs are virtually eliminated.
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Enabled an entirely new online sales model with the ability to provide online demonstrations, 30 day free download trials and direct purchasing of the virtual appliance via the company website.
Jan 28, 2008 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Evaluating SpamTitan, as one of a small group of VMware Certified Appliances globally, West Coast Labs uncovered that SpamTitan’s VMware virtual appliance proved easy to install, manage, test, and backup. By achieving a greater than 99 percent accuracy rating for spam filtration with zero false positives, West Coast Labs could successfully block close to all spam, while ensuring legitimate emails would not blocked or lost using the SpamTitan for VMware solution. Significant advantages include improved ease of use in the evaluation and testing process, while noting real gains to business users in terms of potential redundancy, backup, scalability, and mobility improvements.
SpamTitan is a global provider of enterprise-level email security solutions offering small and medium size businesses (SMBs) comprehensive protection from email threats, including spam, viruses, trojans, phishing, malware and other unwanted content. SpamTitan’s approach in utilizing next-generation virtualization software eliminates the need for unwieldy hardware, giving customers unparalleled flexibility, versatility and scalability but at an affordable price. Integrating best of breed technologies, SpamTitan provides an easy to install, easy to manage and highly secure email gateway. SpamTitan, a division of CopperFasten Technologies, is a global company with headquarters in Galway, Ireland.
This Checkmark ‘premium’ rating is a testament to SpamTitan’s commitment in providing the power, performance and usability that customers need in the fight against the growing spam problem, SpamTitan said. The company is pleased that an independent testing lab further validates SpamTitan’s effectiveness as the company has always excelled at providing new performance functionality, optimized spam filtration, and an ease of use and scalability that is unique in the market, it said.
West Coast Labs has been able to conclude through real-world testing that the SpamTitan solution successfully fuses impressive spam detection capabilities with ease-of-use to provide a powerful, potentially cost-effective, and flexible email threat detection and protection platform. The concise documentation, combined with advanced configuration options and comprehensive reporting ensures ease for new and more advanced users to virtualization.
Jan 6, 2008 | SpamTitan News
Registrati al Webinar
Quando: Venerdì 18 Gennaio 2008, dalle 10.00 alle 11.00
Relatori:
Fabrizio Bressani, Managing Director, DotForce
Fabrizio Malfanti, Technical Director, DotForce
Dove:
Il Vostro Ufficio
Audio: 848 391836
Access Code: 546-542-700 seguito da #
Agenda e contenuti
SpamTitan è una delle soluzioni più complete sul mercato per proteggersi dalle minacce via email. Il software permette di creare una propria email appliance, reale o virtuale per il gateway, offrendo protezione da Virus, Spam, Malware, Phishing e altro contenuto indesiderato. SpamTitan utilizza tecnologie allo stato dell’arte per realizzare una soluzione di facile installazione e manutenzione, di elevato livello di sicurezza ad un costo estremamente contenuto. Il webinar tratterà i seguenti punti:
- SpamTitan – Caratteristiche distintive
- SpamTitan ISO e SpamTitan per VMware
- SpamTitan su Appliance
- Casi di successo
- Online Demo
- Gli strumenti a disposizione del Canale
- Come diventare Rivenditori SpamTitan
- SpamTitan ed il Mercato Education
- A chi è rivolto
Il Webinar si rivolge a Rivenditori, VAR, System Integrator e Internet Service Provider che desiderino integrare la propria offerta di tecnologie di IT Security con uno dei più innovativi, efficaci e completi prodotti antispam e antivirus presenti sul mercato. Di particolare efficacia la proposta per il mercato Education, rivolta ai Rivenditori che indirizzano questo mercato
Informazioni sul Webinar
Una volta registrati, riceverete una conferma tramite email che riporterà l’indirizzo web a cui collegarsi ed il vostro codice di accesso. Nella stessa email verranno descritte le procedure tecniche di partecipazione, per la quale sarà necessario un accesso Internet a banda larga e un telefono.
Per l’Audio: Tel. 848 391836
Access code: 546-542-700 seguito da #
Registrati al Webinar
Dec 7, 2007 | Internet Security Updates
This is a document excerpt
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Time-to-deployment means time-to-revenue for most ISVs today, and reducing deployment complexity can be the difference between making your quarterly numbers or not. ISVs can now address time-to-deployment via new options, including hardware appliances and software-as-a-service (SaaS). This report makes the case for a new deployment option made possible by the proliferation of server virtualization — the virtual appliance. Virtual appliances enable dramatically simpler on-premise deployments without the burden of hardware management or the infrastructure implications of SaaS. Other benefits include assurance around performance and reliability, simpler administration, lower software life-cycle management, and streamlined upgrades. ISVs should begin evaluating this new option to determine if it can speed deployments and transform their business models for the better.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- There Has To Be A Better Way To Deliver Software
- Software Firms Weigh New Delivery Alternatives
- Virtual Appliances Cut Costs And Accelerate Sales
- IT Users Will Love This, Too
- Commodity, Security, And SMB Software Fit Best
- High-Performance And Highly Customized Apps Don’t Fit
RECOMMENDATIONS
Start Experimenting With Virtual Appliances Now
WHAT IT MEANS
Virtual Appliances Will Temper The SaaS Trend
NOTES & RESOURCES
Forrester interviewed the following companies for this report: Amazon.com, BEA Systems, Business Objects, F5 Networks, La-Z-Boy, Network Engines, Openbravo, Purisma, rPath, SpamTitan, and VMware
The full paper can be purchased here
Dec 3, 2007 | SpamTitan News, TitanHQ in the News
Security software developer SpamTitan is launching a new antivirus tool designed specifically for higher education named, appropriately enough, SpamTitan for Higher Education. The new software, which includes spam and malware protection features, will be available Monday.
According to the company, "SpamTitan developed its solution to specifically address the rigorous malware environments and IT network security challenges university and colleges contend with on a daily basis." It’s currently being used by Penn State’s Intercollegiate Athletics, where it’s reportedly eliminating about 6,300 spam messages per day that had been affecting e-mail performance.
Targeted primarily toward e-mail security, SpamTitan for Higher Education is designed to protect schools from viruses, trojans, phishing, and other unwanted content, including spam. It provides about 98 percent spam detection with 0.03 percent false positives, according to the company.
Other features include:
- Content filtering;
- E-mail scanning (inbound and outbound);
- E-mail disclaimer functionality;
- Quarantine reports; and
- Automatic updates of new version releases and spam and virus definitions.
SpamTitan for Higher Education will be available Dec. 3 at $500 for 100 users and $750 for 250 users. More information will be available Monday at the link below.
Nov 19, 2007 | SpamTitan News
SpamTitan are delighted to announce the release of the latest version of SpamTitan 4.10:
- User Interface is now also available in German and Portuguese Brazilian.
- Quarantine Reports are now available in German and Polish.
- VMware tools is now included for VMware installations.
- Per-Domain license count information is now available showing the daily license usage/domain.
- Transport Layer Security (TLS) support is now included. This provides certificate-based authentication and encrypted sessions.
- System Health Check functionality will analyse and report any problems with the system. See Reporting -> System Information page.
- ClamAV virus engine update to 0.91.2. This release fixes various bugs in clamav.
- Spamassassin engine updated to 3.2.3. This release offers numerous improvements over the previous version, including rule compilation for faster scan times.
Nov 15, 2007 | TitanHQ Partner News
When we spoke with Ronan Kavanagh, sales director of Galway, Ireland-based SpamTitan, he described SpamTitan’s membership in the Virtual Appliance Marketplace of the titan of virtualization, VMware.
A major benefit of its partnership with VMware is that it’s “letting a lot of people know we’re out there,” which Kavanagh explained is helpful since the “decision-making process” for “the larger organizations can be a little bit longer than the smaller ones.” And, SpamTitan’s “solution works fantastically for those environments, with 10,000 to 20,000 users. SpamTitan has been delivering at the highest level for quite a while, either as a hardware solution or a software solution,” so “we have some good people using it.” By being part of VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace, Kavanagh has found SpamTitan’s able to reach out further, so that even more good people can end up using its solution.
From Hardware to Software Appliance
Kavanagh recalled how “we looked at launching a software version of our physical appliance about 18 months ago, and while investigating the way we were going to do this, we became aware that VMware themselves were investing considerable resources into virtual appliances as a key strategy for themselves. The timing was coincidentally very, very good. We contacted VMware, and got introduced to the people running their virtual appliance program – they have their processes and partnership programs, and we went through that. We were an early adapter from their point of view – one of the first ten companies to get certified under their Virtual Appliance Marketplace certification program. They were happy as much as we were delighted to be involved in their certification program, to ensure our virtual appliance meets their product suites, and works seamlessly with their product suites.” Kavanagh noted, “We’ve attained that certification,” and this “adds weight to the product, certainly in the marketplace, from a customer point of view if they’ve deployed VMware products. And if they are looking to add products, they’re going to add certified products because they know it’s going to work.”
So far, from a study of its data from its VMware partnership, “60 to 70 percent of their customers running SpamTitan are on free versions of VMware” — suggesting use by smaller organizations. “There may be notions out there that VMware is an enterprise product,” and “if on the SME level” users may thus “bypass that product,” but the evidence suggests that this is “absolutely not the case,” as “most people are using free versions of the VMware product, and getting tremendous value of out it.” Being certified by, and partners with, VMware “are pretty key” to SpamTitan’s success, since “of the virtualization products out there” — of which there are “three or four mainstays out there” — Kavanagh has found that “VMware is about the only company pushing virtual appliances to the extent that they are.”
VMware’s Virtual Revolution
We spoke with Srinivas Krishnamurti, Director of Product Management and Market Development at VMware, who explained the company has “been around since 1998,” and that “starting around June ‘05, we started talking around the concept whereby ISVs can actually ship their software preinstalled and preconfigured in a virtual machine,” and this “evolved into our virtual appliance strategy.” Krishnamurti recalled VMware “first started talking about this concept of being able to distribute software in a virtual machine in June 2005” and “at that point in time, we said, ‘hey this is a new software distribution paradigm.”
At that time VMware was working with “about six partners” like Oracle and Red Hat, who “preconfigured their software into a VM and put it up on our website,” and customers found they didn’t have to “spend any time installing and configuring our software” for evals, so the “time to value was vastly reduced.” Krishnamurti added, “since then, we’ve been talking to a lot of ISVs and a lot of customers, saying, ‘what do you guys think about distributing software already installed and configured to run?’ He added, customers “don’t have to waste a lot of cycles getting configured.”
The logic proved infectious, and the “virtual appliance became the new paradigm for software distribution in 2005,” and after starting off with just a handful of products in the virtual marketplace, So while VMware’s virtual appliance market started off with only “about 6 products,” just “fast forward” to the present day, and there are now “over 600 products listed in our virtual marketplace” and the “rate of downloads [is] two downloads per minute off our website,” and “we see ISVs saying, ‘this is a better way for us to distribute our software’” since it can lower their costs.
So while the paradigm was originally intended for support and eval, it has evolved for all manner of software products, since otherwise selling software is “complicated,” as vendors had to “send a rep to the site to get it up and running,” which is “pretty expensive for an ISV to do.” So far, VMware has seen “a tremendous amount of traction for distributing software in virtual machines,” and “about a year after they started seeing a trend where some vendors starting coming up and saying it was good not only for just evals but also a viable way for selling production software.”
Indeed, customers are saying, “’I can buy my software as a hardware appliance or as a virtual appliance,’” and VMware has “started to see a jump from evals to actual production use as well.” Krishnamurti recalled that “last year, in June, we started an actual certification program,” during which VMware will “run that virtual appliance in our labs and make sure it is really optimized for our VMware infrastructure stack,” so by “using that logo,” it’s “optimized to run as VMware infrastructure.” And as of today “we actually have 600 virtual appliances in the marketplace. Customers are taking note, realizing, “‘this is a better way to sell my software,” since “for customers, this is much easier for me if I don’t have to install and configure software.” Krishnamurti noted, “Some of the customers that we’ve talked to… have already deployed virtually appliances into production use today.” Indeed, coming into the marketplace is “quite the gamut” of companies that “we’re actually seeing,” and “the area where customers are very comfortable putting a virtual appliance into production use, the first area is the security space. For firewalls, anti-spam and that kind of software – a lot of vendors in that space have been shipping hardware appliances, and if you want to buy a firewall you get this box.” Krishnamurti noted “customers are getting used to getting these boxes and plugging it in” and having them be “plug and play” right out of the box. But then “here comes a box that is no standard,” and customers find they “can’t manage the software” so they “have to go back to the vendor,” lest it end up “not getting utilized.” Enter the virtual marketplace, where there is no need for a box, and the preconfigured software is available through download: “What if I can get the same software stack – and without the plug in box, get same stack and put it into a virtual machine and go deploy that for whatever virtualization platform they’re running on.” So, while “security software is the first place where customers are saying, ‘you know what, I’m going to place a virtual appliance down,” Krishnamurti observed that “now we’re seeing vendors like BEA, etc., middleware vendors, also jumping on this virtual appliance bandwagon.” And this is good news for the enterprise, the SMB, even smaller customers who might never have anted up for the plug-in box in the first place.
As Krishnamurti explained, “SMB customers don’t tend to have a large IT staff” so the “install is a nuisance for them,” so “for them, being able to download something and click onto a couple of buttons and boom, it starts to work – this is a tremendous benefit.” And for the enterprise, “they may have a lot of IT folks, but they don’t have a lot of resource to waste time installing software,” and once they’ve “bought software, they want to start using it as quickly as possible” and minimize the “effort to install and configure this thing.” This is evident in the rising interest in a virtualized BEA stack: “Also know a lot of our enterprise customers are very keen to deploy the BEA stack as a virtual appliance,” Krishnamurti noted, and “we have talked to a number of those customers as well.” Thus, VMware is finding, “it’s the whole gamut, we’re seeing interest from across the board.” So while with regard to deployments, “security is getting the most amount of traction,” virtualized security solutions are just the tip of the spear with much, much more on its way. As Krishnamurti observed, “We’re actually seeing interest from across the board.” He added, “The other big thing the virtual appliance simplifies, in terms of ongoing maintenance as well,” is you “plug it in and suck it up.” Basically, you just “install and configure onetime.”
But with regard to the “ongoing basis, what happens if you don’t have a virtual appliance,” and “you have the OS and app sitting on top of it,” then the “OS needs to be patched, the app needs to be patched,” but in reality, the “OS vendor doesn’t talk to ISV” and a “security fix could potential break my app,” and when this happens, “Do I call my ISV, or my vendor?” Which ever one you call might retort, “It’s not my problem,” with the ISV pointing the finger instead at the OS vendor and vice versa. This is “just a hassle” as “no one is talking to anybody,” and the “customer feels like” he’s getting “bits and pieces from different vendors,” and this is “very problematic – even if you have an IT staff, the number of people responsible for patching is just enormous.”
All this hassle goes away when you enter the virtual appliance marketplace. That’s because, as Krishnamurti explained, the virtual appliance is akin to a black box, something we may think of like a Tivo Box, which has Linux running inside – but you never care about it, since it just runs the way it’s supposed to. “Why cant enterprise software be that way?” asked Krishnamurti. “I should be able to buy whatever app I please, put it down and it starts working – and not have to worry about patching. Customers just want to see it work.” For the enterprise, this is a welcome relief from the long nightmare of patch management. “Even if you have an IT staff, you can say ‘Go work on something strategic rather than install, patch and do all that grunt work.’”
As Krishnamurti reflected, “This concept of being able to install software in a virtual machine and distribute a machine ready to run is something our company has been thinking about since day one,” and “if I talk to any of our founders, they were obviously thinking about that – it was not a surprise for us,” as VMware was not “waiting for virtualization to find traction before we started to think about other things,” but kept their eye on the future, listening to the needs of their customers. “Our customers, once they found out a little bit more about it, the light bulbs start to go off,” and they began to realize, ‘I’m spending a lot of time doing stuff I really don’t need to do,” and this realization “changes the IT paradigm. The more people we talk to, the more light bulbs start to go off, and we’re starting to see more downloads. As awareness grows, we’re seeing more and more demand for it.” Added Krishnamurti, “When the customer downloads that file, and the software is up and running, the sales cycle speeds up quite a bit.” Consequently, the download rate at VMware’s virtual appliance marketplace has enjoyed a doubling from around one download per minute six months ago to two. “Now it’s gotten to stage where it has actually doubled in terms of coming to the virtual marketplace and downloading of the actual appliances.” Added Krishnamurti, “We’re pretty excited about it.”
Virtualizing Security: SpamTitan Joins VMware’s Virtual Marketplace
Krishnamurti recalled that VMware started to work with SpamTitan about a year and a half ago, and noted they “originally shipped these hardware appliances, these hardware boxes” off to prospective customers. “Just think about evals,” noted Krishnamurti, “to evaluate the SpamTitan stack, they had to send an actual box, ship that to the customer and back as well. Just doing an eval was pretty expensive to them, and they couldn’t have a 1,000 eval boxes, this limited the number of customers who could do an eval of their software.”
The constraints imposed by the reality of selling hardware appliances raised an important question at SpamTitan – how to expand sales in their current markets, and also increase the number of markets where they can sell. Being based in Ireland, “it’s expensive to ship boxes to Asia or even America, it was exponentially expensive and this limited SpamTitan to sales mostly in Europe. But when they thought about the virtual appliance, they realized they can sell it anywhere – and take exactly the same stack, put it into a virtual machine, and now put it up onto the web marketplace and support thousands of evals at the same time.” Now, Krishnamurti observed, SpamTitan was “not limited to the number of boxes they can ship. Now their evals and sales are coming from the world over, expanding the total available market to which they can sell.” Krishnamurti boiled this down to “the two important things: one, they didn’t have to make any important changes to the software, and two, it opened up new markets to them.” On the former, Krishnamurti explained, “That’s the thing: with the whole concept of virtual appliance, the important thing is we’re not asking the ISVs to rewrite any piece of their stack, and instead of putting it onto CDs or a hardware box, virtual machines are almost the exact same thing as the physical machine,” and for the ISV, this is “easier for them.” And, Krishnamurti noted, an added benefit to SpamTitan: “given they were one of the first ones to jump on the virtualization bandwagon, they believe it was a competitive differentiator as well,” and thus their embrace of the virtual appliance marketplace “worked out very for them.” VMware offers ISVs a virtual appliance certification program, which can be turned around in just a couple of weeks.
Krishnamurti explained it was “a pretty aggressive testing matrix,” something that is “shared ahead of time” to help the ISV prepare. “It’s not something we try to ding people on,” but instead “we share the best practices,” and this “enables them to pass the certification as quickly as possible.” That way, “once submitted to the program for certification, it’s as close to certification as possible.” VMware provides ISVs with “detailed feedback,” so getting certified is something they can “turn around pretty fast for anyone who wants to build virtual appliances.”
Krishnamurti emphasized that “the important thing is we provide a lot of information for ISVs that want to create a virtual appliance,” and that way, “for ISVs to create certifiable appliance, the number of times we have to go back and forth with these ISVs is going to be reduced.” Spam Titan was “in actually one of the first, I’d say, ‘batch’ of ISVs to get their appliance certified. We had the website where we hosted all these virtual appliances, and we branded it as Virtual Appliance Marketplace last December.” SpamTitan was “probably among the first five ISVs to get certified, and to get re-listed on the new rebranded Virtual Appliance Marketplace.” SpamTitan, as one of the “first ones to do it,” has enjoyed “already some competitive differentiator to it.” The relationship with SpamTitan and its early embrace of the virtual appliance model has been good for both VMware and SpamTitan. “They were one of the first [ISVs] from the security/anti-spam space to actually do virtual appliances,” and “we’ve actually seen a pretty big uptick in downloads of their appliance, so we’re pretty excited about their participation in the virtual marketplace. The impact for them is they’re able to see a much more global audience – we’re excited to enable this, and to open new markets to them.” And “for us they’ve been able to provide us with some input into saying, ‘Hey, as you think about your virtual appliance roadmap, here are some things you should think about for enabling for us.’” This has made for a positive and reciprocal partnership. “As partners, we’re able to get some product direction input from them as well – that’s one of those things where both parties are in a win-win situation where both parties are helping out each other.”
While SpamTitan’s early embrace of the virtual appliance model has been mutually beneficial to both VMware and SpamTitan, and while it provided some early competitive advantage to SpamTitan, its competition watched and learned from SpamTitan’s early adoption. “Once people kind of got the word on virtual appliances and how it makes life simpler for their customers and their development,” Krishnamurti noted, the competition followed in SpamTitan’s footsteps. “Proofpoint is another vendor who found a virtual appliance in the virtual appliance marketplace” made sense, and is now a VMware certified member of the Virtual Appliance Marketplace. And McAfee just announced, and one I believe is in beta right now. Some big-name ISVs are starting to do virtual appliances now.” Outside the security space, middleware vendors include BEA, Business Objects, and storage vendors like LeftHand Networks have joined VMware’s virtual appliance marketplace, “and even within the security space big names are starting to say, ‘We should do something about this.’” Krishnamurti noted, “At the end of the day, it’s a great thing – it’s the same software but delivered in a very different and easy way. If I was a customer, if every vendor was going to give me a virtual appliance, it still comes down to, ‘What is the best product out there for me?” So in the end, “the people who are going to win are the ones who have the good software in the virtual appliance marketplace.”
Confronting an Evolving Threat
That’s something SpamTitan hasn’t forgotten, as it grapples with the evolution of the spam threat and its increasing complexity and lethality. Among recent spam trends, Kavanagh thinks that “botnets are probably the biggest” – but he added that in November of last year, he “started seeing graphic based spam, which looks like text but was in effect an image – and because it was an image, textual readers built into anti-spam solutions would be ineffective against them, and by and large they were – we would first have OCR technology built into our solution, and then the spammers went a step further: they started tilting and blurring those images to circumvent the fist generation OCR technologies released to deal with that spam. Then, Kavanagh added, the next biggest wave was PDFs — which have become very prevalent.” When victims “open them up,” thinking they’ve received an e-greeting card, “within there is the spam message” delivering a Trojan. The emergence of PDF spam has been “quite interesting,” Kavanagh noted, and is “tied into the area of botnets: sending out millions of PDFs was bandwidth intensive, something spammers could not do – but now with the use of botnets, the taking over thousands of PCs, by sending out so many spams from so many PCs, spammers can afford to send out larger files like PDFs.” Kavanagh has “been to some interesting talks that have demonstrated why it’s all happening,” and “the bottom line is – who is sending the spam messages out there? It is by and large criminal organizations.” So one big reason why the war against spam isn’t working is that “these guys break the law in 9/10ths of their business anyway, so international rules and regulations carry little weight with these guys.” Ultimately, when asking, “Why won’t spam go away?” Kavanagh said the answer is clear: “because someone’s earning money at it – as long as a buck is coming from it, it will keep happening.” And, he added, because spammers continue to evolve their malicious armory, they’re working tirelessly to keep one step ahead of the anti-spam crusaders. But the anti-spam software engineers at SpamTitan are working just as tirelessly: “There hasn’t been anything they’ve done so far that has really taken everything out, they haven’t yet been able to do that.” Fortunately, Kavanagh has observed, “there’s smart people on both sides of the fence.” When asked what to expect next, Kavanagh conceded it’s “hard to figure it out,” since “like the virus world, a lot of the solutions are still very much reactive solutions.” But one thing is easy to predict: when asked what we can expect to see coming down the road, Kavanagh’s answer was both sober and taciturn: “More.” And you’ll be in luck with this inevitable moment when less becomes more, as SpamTitan permits free trials/downloads of its software, at www.spamtitan.com. So when Kavanagh’s inevitability comes to pass, and you need help from the anti-spam pros to wrestle this more back into less, help will be immediately on the way.
Sep 24, 2007 | Internet Security Updates
Network & Information Security The Epic Struggle against Spam: SpamTitan Comes to the Rescue as SMEs face a Rising Tide of Spam
Sep 24, 2007 – By Barry Zellen, www.technologyinnovator.com
Like the Monty Python song goes: Spam spam spam spam; Spam spam spam spam. An endless deluge of spam has been flooding the inboxes of individuals and enterprises for years, but until recently, SMEs were largely spared the agony.
Off the radar scopes of most spammers, who bulk targeted enterprise email addresses and individual email addresses from the larger ISPs, the SMEs have begun to lose the sanctuary provided by their small size, and the uncommon nature of their email addresses that eluded most harvesting techniques. Especially since the advent of botnets, SMEs have entered the fray, drawn in to this epic struggle against the rising tide of electronic mayhem, as the relentless deluge of spam continues to clog the electronic arteries of corporate America.
For the enterprise, spam has long been a huge and expensive problem requiring an increasing slice of the IT and security budgetary pie. And for many ISPs, it’s required an expensive anti-spam effort to ensure the security of their customers, and their continued loyalty. For the SME, this sudden onslaught of spam can be the kiss of death, paralyzing operations as the inboxes of these understaffed organizations jam up with thousands of unwanted, unsolicited spams. Finding an easy-to -use, easy-to-afford solution to this mushrooming spam epidemic could thus save a company as small as a mom and pop operation or as large as a global enterprise, significant time, resources, and stress.
And we know: last year we found we were spending several hours each day sifting through our inbox looking for legitimate, business-critical correspondence; and almost as much time sifting through our spam folder looking for false positives that got tagged as spam but which contained untold riches and opportunity. As part of our search for a solution to this growing nemesis of businesses both large and small, we spoke with Ronan Kavanagh, sales director of Galway, Ireland-based SpamTitan, a provider of both physical and virtual appliances that protect users from the spam deluge.
SpamTitan’s name was itself reason enough to seek out a briefing: the Random House unabridged dictionary describes a titan as “a person or thing of enormous size, strength, power, influence,” and the origins of the word hark back to ancient Greek mythology, to the family of giants born to Uranus and Gaea, including their sons Coeus, Crius, Cronus, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Oceanus, who sought to rule heaven and were overthrown and supplanted by the family of Zeus. We find ourselves locked into our own epic struggle against an invisible nemesis, so this etymological link to ancient Greek mythology sounded promising. If the company can live up to the epic and glorious nature of its name, we figured, it’s definitely worth a conversation – and maybe even a download of the free trial version I found at www.spamtitan.com.
Among the first questions we had for Kavanagh was the genesis of SpamTitan’s name, and he explained, “We thought long and hard about it, and the first thing we wanted, since the product is very much focused on an online sales and deployment process, so bearing that in mine, we wanted spam in the name, so people could find us” when searching online, using Google and other search engines. As for “the Titan element,” that emerged from “just a lot of thought of what we wanted to put out there,” suggesting “strength, protection, we wanted something that basically, you hear it, you know exactly what it does – that’s what we focused on and that s what we got – and we’re happy with it.”
SpanTitan’s solution, and the pricing and distribution model used by its virtual appliance solution, holds much promise, for a wide spectrum of customers, from the SME seeking simplicity, ease of deployment and a low price point to the enterprise struggling with growth, geographical expansion or changing locations, for whom a virtual appliance makes strategic sense. Without a box to move, or reconfigure, getting bigger and expanding one’s corporate footprint won’t become complex or expensive. It also holds promise for the SME sector, generally lacking the in-house IT capabilities to manage a physical appliance: the easily downloaded solution sits well with the technically challenged, as well as the resource-starved. SpamTitan recently announced it had been certified by VMware to join its Virtual Appliance Marketplace, a vote of confidence from one of virtualization’s masters of the universe. All good stuff that made us curious to learn more.
Spam Increasingly Targets the SME
Our sense that spam was on the rise, and increasingly affecting smaller businesses than before, was reinforced by our conversation with Kavanagh, who observed, “We’ve seen it change within probably the last twelve months to a year-and-a-half, becoming much more dynamic.” He added that “small organizations noticed a change, and we’ve noticed that change from a number of different factors – the singular biggest change is in the sheer volumes of spam that have continued to emerge. In the last 12 months, there’s been a doubling of the volumes of spam a least.” This has been the “biggest singular effect that has impacted us,” both “to our physical appliance as well as our virtual appliance,” as SpamTitan has “had to upgrade a lot of those appliances just to deal with the sheer capacity in volumes that have shown themselves out there.”
In addition to the “sheer volumes of spam being seen out there,” Kavanagh observed that “one of the big things that we saw” that’s been having an “impact on the SME sector” was in the “methods adopted by spammers,” and “the biggest single impact is the use of botnets by spammer,” which are used to harvest email addresses off PCs and servers.
The result of this is that SMEs are “starting to see spam when in the past they didn’t.” In the past, he noted, “people were advised, ‘use a secondary email address online and don’t respond to spam messages, don’t give business cards out to people on the street, and basically you should be fine,’ but now botnets are corrupting computers, taking e-mail out of computers,” and the upshot is that “people that never got spam in the past are getting spam now” and this is “affecting the people in the five and ten people organizations” who were “not getting spam in the past.” So now, “as a result they need the same level of solution that the enterprise level needs, and the same level of functionality.”
So while “a lot of SME customers had something in place to stop spam,” Kavanagh has found that “they were looking around because it just wasn’t good enough or offered limited functionality,” and that their “solution is almost as difficult to deal with as the problem – a particular challenge for a small organization if you don’t have a large IT staff.”
Indeed, so widespread were these “problems with solutions that upwards of 90 percent said they had an existing solution in place,” and there were a “wide variety of solutions they were using.” But he found that “the two or three top topics for why they were looking elsewhere were largely associated with the ineffectiveness of their solution, poor functionality, and finally the costs.”
Addressing all three of these issues head-on, SpamTitan has been making inroads to the SME space; even for those small and midsize businesses for whom “using managed services are quite popular,” a lot of their service providers are now “using SpamTitan now to offer to their customers.” Added Kavanagh, “SMEs really do rely on companies like our own to come up with patches and solutions as soon as possible after the next spam trick is released.”
A Virtual Solution to a Very Real Problem
As spam volumes continue to rise, Kavanagh explained, SpamTitan’s virtual appliance solution offers scalability well-suited to these perilous times. He identified “a couple of areas pertinent to the e-mail gateways that virtual appliances offer benefits” apart from fighting spam. One of these is volumes: “with virtual appliances, if there is an increase on volumes for mail, instead of removing a tin box and buying a bigger one, you just assign more memory to the virtual appliance and make it bigger with the GUI,” something that can be “done in five minutes at no extra cost.”
This is particularly attractive to larger users, like ISPs and educational institutions, “where a five to ten percent bump in spam can have a significant impact on the resources” spent on IT. Kavanagh observed “within the enterprise, where a lot of the virtualization software is pitched, the benefits really accrue,” and added that “if you are a large organization, the savings is bigger.” Kavanagh added, “In the IT world, if you want to benefit further from those,” SpamTitan is “offering a solution that is purpose-built for that environment, we certainly believe that enterprises are going to be delighted to look at it: they know all about the benefits of virtualization, and they have the expertise to really benefit from virtual appliances.”
For smaller users, virtual appliances offer an additional value proposition: they “bring enterprise class functionality down to the SME sector, and are priced accordingly.” As Kavanagh recalled, “When we launched the SpamTitan product, we were very cognizant of the number of vendors in the space” and realized that the “uniqueness of a virtual appliance and the versatility of a virtual appliance over a physical appliance give a real edge to SpamTitan over other players in the space,” with its “software solution around virtualization instead of a physical hardware appliance,” but “still with the same benefits of a physical appliance.” By offering a virtual appliance, the “overall cost to us as a company were dramatically reduced” and “we were able to put the product on the market for price that was very affordable.”
So Affordable, Thanks to Innovative Appliance-Based Pricing Model
So affordable, in fact, that an up-to-100 user license costs just $500, rising from there: up to 250 users costs $750; up to 500 users, $1,250; up to 750 users, $2,000; up to 1,000 users, $2,500; up to 2,000 users, $3,250; up to 5,000 users, $4,000, and above 5,000 users, the price is subject to a POA.
Kavanagh described this as a “fairly unique licensing model,” noting it was “an appliance based pricing model,” adding that the “product is software-based, coming from a hardware genesis” and that “we’ve stuck with that particular model so rather than a few-user license – for instance, for ten- and twenty-users per increment, “we’ve put very wide bracket out there,” with the “first appliance license good for 100, the next for 250, a very simple system and allows us a lot of flexibility, provides an enterprise-class solution to an area that has been very neglected or priced out of the market previously.”
In SpamTitan’s competitive landscape, where it faces “the normal brands that pop-up in the anti-spam solutions” space, customers are drawn “for different reasons to different companies.” But “when they come across SpamTitan,” Kavanagh explained, they are “coming across the concept of virtual appliances: we introduced this concept.” And “over and above what they’ve been used to dealing with, either dealing with a single point of failure, redundancy issues within their gateway,” customers can find solace “when they see virtual appliances, particularly if familiar with virtualization through VMware appliances.”
As Kavanagh explained, at SpamTitan, “we kind of see it as an evolution – we’ve seen people move from traditional software solutions to appliances for the obvious benefits, primarily around ease of use and deployment. You don’t have to set up servers, operating systems, virtual appliances, this takes it to another level: it’s almost a marrying of the two, the benefits of software, some of which are lost going to appliances, taking the positive of both elements, put together and evolved into virtual appliances.”
Four Key Benefits to Look For When Evaluating Anti-Spam Solutions
Kavanagh described the key benefits of SpamTitan, noting “we categorize it into four key benefits,” including testing, ease of deployments, redundancy, and scalability.
The first of these benefits that’s “immediate obviously to our customers” is their “testing of the product. Rather than physically get a piece of hardware and get it into datacenter to test, they can download it and have it running in half an hour, simple as that.” Plus, “when they’ve done the testing, they can keep it,” and even if their “30-day license for evaluation purposes may have ended, they can keep the data, rather than given back a physical testing box.” While this “may seem like a small point,” Kavanagh stressed that it’s “an extremely important point for a lot of organizations in the testing process.”
When it comes to deployment, “whether local or further geographic locations, because it’s software, it’s an image, it can be stored and backed up and sent to anywhere you want.” For instance, “to deploy to four different boxes in four different countries can be done online – the images can be deployed over the ‘net, configured on a PC locally, and sent off for everyone.” As Kavanagh described the benefits: “It’s huge: we see it online, because we come from a hardware background, we know what’s involved when a customer in the UK or Spain or the States or whatever wants to test our hardware box, we deal with a local distributor or reseller, send them the unit, have to insure it – if we never see the box again, if we get paid for it,” and on top of these worries, there may be “a time lag between the initial conversation and the customer getting the unit, a day or two or a week or two. With a virtual appliance, they come to our website, download, burn it onto a disc, and off they go – as simple as that.”
This ease of deployment is an “edge we will have had,” since “our business model was such that it made the transition into the area of virtual appliances nearly seamless.” Also adding to SpamTitan’s appeal was “getting through the certification process with VMware, the partnership deals with that. We’re on the road, as opposed to still figuring it all out,” while it is “doubtless other people will look at this model, for ourselves, we see ourselves as having a level of expertise at this stage that is putting us in a very good place.”
Among the other “big” benefits of SpamTitan is its redundancy. As Kavanagh explained, “Again the whole idea of failures within a hardware environment – and how you deal with that – the complexity and cost of how you deal with that – physically removing the appliance or replacing it with another, or going to the expense of having a host of high-availability units on standby, with a virtual appliance,” you’re “just baking up the image – image can simply be deployed to another server immediately – that in itself is a fantastic benefit for customers,” as the “downtime associated with that is almost zero.” The advantages for geographic dispersements also hold with redundancy and back-up.” For instance, “if a box breaks in Germany, rather than send a new box, you simple redeploy the image onto another server in Germany.”
Lastly, SpamTitan offers its users the ease of scalability – simply “increase the resource within the virtual server, rather than upgrade the physical appliances.” Kavanagh explained that these benefits are “all interlinked,” and when combined foster an additional benefit: mobility, so “if you are moving offices,” whereas a “physical box, moved from place A to B,” requires much effort, for “virtual appliances, this just doesn’t happen.” This “scalability, mobility, are all quite linked – the whole idea is they can be very, very flexible and malleable and making the IT job a bit easier wherever possible.”
And, explained Kavanagh, it’s SpamTitan’s “flexibility, being probably the top of the list,” that sets it apart.
About SpamTitan
For more information on SpamTitan, please visit: www.spamtitan.com. According to the company, SpamTitan “provides the most comprehensive solution to email threats on the market today.” Its software “allows you to create an email appliance, real or virtual, for your gateway offering protection from viruses, spam, malware, phishing and unwanted content. The solution uses best of breed technologies to provide an easily installed, easily managed and highly secure solution for your email.” Among the benefits of SpamTitan’s solution are:
- Full Free Product download
- Free 30 day maintenance and support
- 98.5% Spam blocked
- ISO and VMware® options
- Annual Maintenance fees from $150 for 100 users
- Includes two AntiVirus Solutions – Kaspersky and ClamAV
- End User Spam Quarantine and digest
- Up and running in 30 minutes
- Email content controls
- Disclaimers on email
- In and outward bound scanning
- Unlimited domains supported
- Full automated reporting suite
Aug 22, 2007 | SpamTitan News
New
Passive OS Fingerprint provides the ability to identify the connecting SMTP client operating system. This information can subsequently be used to penalize mail originating from, for instance Windows XP systems and reward connections from Unix systems. This feature may be enabled from the Anti-Spam Engine -> Settings page. See the online help on that page for more details.
Update
ClamAV virus engine update to 0.91.1. This fixes some stability issues in the earlier versions.
Problems Resolved
- Summary reports were missing count data.
- Enabling HTTPS.
- Scheduled reports showing bytes transferred was displaying the incorrect value.
- Domain policy settings where been displayed incorrectly.
- It was not possible to set the quarantine report runtime to 00 hour or 00 minute.
- Incorrect ‘Statistics Since’ date may have been shown on the dashboard.
- Weekly and monthly reports could get run daily.
Aug 17, 2007 | Internet Security Updates
SpamTitan are delighted to release a new white paper:
Virtual v’s Physical Appliances – 4 Compelling Reasons for Change.
Executive Summary
Virtual Appliances have appeared on the horizon as an unstoppable force. Where traditional appliances supplanted the office and data centre server, the virtual appliance has taken this to a new level and in turn rendered the incumbent effectively obsolete. Where appliances addressed critical needs not addressed by office servers, they also introduced further complexities and difficulties which are easily resolved by virtual servers. This white paper takes a look at the advantages of virtual appliances in comparison with physical appliances and addresses some of the key benefits. Benefits which include ease of evaluation and testing, ease of deployment, streamlined redundancy and backup, and the key benefits of scalability and mobility….
Aug 15, 2007 | SpamTitan News
- New: Per Domain Administration is now possible allowing domain administrators to manage specific domains and generate reports for those domains.
- New: Quarantine report can now also be generated in Dutch and Danish.
- New: It is now possible to generate certificate signing requests (CSR) which can be issued to a certificate signing authority to generate a signed certificate which may then be used for secure HTTPS communication. See the Settings -> SSL page for more details.
- Update: ClamAV virus engine update to 0.90.3. This fixes some security bugs in the clamav library.
- Fix: Resolved issue where users could get notification of messages that where quarantined even if they had that message whitelisted.
May 10, 2007 | SpamTitan News
New/Changed/Improved
- New: The User Interface and user quarantine reports are now localized for the following languages: Spanish, Czech and Japanese
- New: SpamTitan support tunnel may now be opened from the admin console as well as from the UI.
- New: Botnet detection plugin. Determines if message arrived via a spam botnet. Disabled by default. See Anti-Spam Engine -> Settings.
- Update: ClamAV virus engine update to 0.90.1. The 0.9x series introduces lots of improvements in terms of detection rate and performance, like support for many new packers and decryptors, RAR3 and SIS archives, and a new phishing signatures format that proves to be very effective.
- Update: Spamassassin engine updated to 3.1.8. This fixes a potential denial of service vulnerability caused by overly long URLs found in malformed HTML in a scanned mail message. Processing of this message takes a long time and causes massive memory usage, which could cause a Denial of Service due to memory exhaustion or increased swapping
- Update: OCR engine has been updated to perform addition scans on embedded images and providing even higher hit rates.
- Fix: Resolved issue in quarantine reports where some unicode encoded subjects strings where not been displayed correctly.
- Fix: Resolved issue in quarantine reports where some html font tags where not correctly terminated.
- Fix: Resolved issue with outbound disclaimers that was experienced with some mail clients when the message content-transfer-encoding was Quoted Printable.
Apr 23, 2007 | SpamTitan News
This version of SpamTitan has been created using a SCSI disk to support the VMware ESX/VI3 platform.
To import this virtual appliance to the ESX platform you can use the VMware Converter product or the ESX command line tools. For later please refer to:
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/how_to_convert.html
Jan 1, 2007 | SpamTitan News
New/Changed/Improved
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New: Revamped user interface including system dashboard that allows an overview of system status and mail volumes.
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New: Added ability to import list of domains during configuration. This is particularly for sites that are handling 100s or even 1000s of domains.
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New: Added mail queue management functionality. This allows you to view, hold, release, requeue and delete messages in the SpamTitan mail queues. The mail queue management interface may be accessed from the daashboard.
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New: Spam score can now be included in the Subject of spam messages that are forward when the policy is ‘Tag and Pass’. To specify the spam score in the Subject of passed spam messages add the string _SCORE_ to the spam subject tag. This will be substituted with the actual score.
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New: Added new report ‘Top Senders’
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New: Administrator may now forward quarantined messages to his/her own email address for inspection. This is available from the Options tab of the quarantine mail viewer. It is now also possible to Release, Delete or Whitelist a message directly from the quarantine mail viewer.
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New: If configuring a HTTP proxy, can now also specify proxy uthentication credentials if required.
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Update: Spamassassin engine updated to 3.1.7. This release contains several important bug fixes over the previous version.
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Update: ClamAV virus engine update to 0.88.6. This release includes minor bugfixes.
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Fix: Resolved issue adding disclaimers to certain emails that caused the email message to be truncated.
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Fix: Resolved issue listing quarantined items in the quarantine report which had already been deleted.
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Fix: Resolved issue recording RBL hits in the database.
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Fix: Resolved issue which prevented some hosts from enabling the SpamTitan Support connection.
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Fix: Resolved issue which occassionally would prevent importing backup file.
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Fix: Resolved issue where a domain policy spam quarantine cutoff level settings was not been inherited by new user policies.
Sep 19, 2006 | SpamTitan News
New/Changed/Improved
- New: Added Optical Character Recognition (OCR) plugin to combat increasing spread of image only spam. This plugin checks for specific keywords in embedded image files. On a busy server it may not be desirable to have this plugin enabled as it could hog system resources (adding at least 2-3 seconds processing time for each mail). As such it is disabled by default. It may be enabled from the Anti-Spam Engine -> Settings page.
- New: Users now have the ability to request an on-demand quarantine report from a link on an existing report. The administrator controls if this option is present or not, and is disabled by default.
- New: Added ‘admin’ console login which allows basic tasks such as view/modify network settings, reset web access settings (in case of lockout), restart web server, ping/traceroute tools and reboot of the system. This account has the same password as the web ‘admin’ account.
- New: Added penpals soft-whitelisting feature. This lowers the spam score of received replies to a message previously sent by a local user to this address. This can be useful in preventing potential false positives from email addresses that users are in frequent contact with.
- New: Added a ‘View Source’ tab to the quarantine mail viewer. This allows the user to view the unformatted ‘raw’ message source.
- New: Added spam quarantine cutoff level. Administrator can now set a policy to quarantine spam, but to discard messages scoring above a certain level. This is configurable on a per-domain/per-user policy basis. It is disabled by default.
- New: Automatically remember last period filter on history page. When the admin returns to the history it will automatically use the previously use period filter, rather that always using ‘Just for Today’ filter.
- New: Added support for displaying multi-byte character sets. i.e the quarantine listing (both in the UI and reports) display multibyte subjects correctly. Also the mail viewer will now correctly display content using multi-byte character sets.
- Update: Spamassassin engine updated to 3.1.4. This release contains several important bug fixes over the previous version.
- Update: ClamAV virus engine update to 0.88.4. This release fixes a possible heap overflow.
- Fix: Resolved issue where rejected postfix messages due to ‘Sender address rejected: Domain not found’ and ‘Sender address rejected: need fully-qualified address’ where not been looged to the database and therefore where not showing up in the history.
- Fix: Resolved issue which allowed a user who had no messages processed by SpamTitan to view the entire quarantine if they login successfully to the web interface.
- Fix: Resolved bug in charts that sometimes showed an empty entry.
- Fix: Resolved issue viewing log files due to browser incompatabilities.
- Fix: Resolved issue where a random policy would be generated if an end-user modified their quarantine settings from the UI.
- Fix: Resolved issue with pop3 authentication where it was not possible to authenticate if the pop3 server required the full email address for login.
- Fix: Resolved issue which prevented multiple nightly reports been generated.
Aug 6, 2006 | SpamTitan News
Remarks
- New: Provide ability to enable UI management using HTTPS via a SpamTitan self-signed X509 certificate.
- Update: Optimized database queries.
- Fix: Resolved issue where CPU temperature was displayed incorrectly.
- Fix: Resolved issue that prevented user from initiating a secure tunnel to SpamTitan support.
- Fix: Resolved issue where it was not possible to backup/restore the bayesian database.
- Fix: Resolved issue where it was not possible to use the realtime log viewer.
- Fix: Resolved issue with IE browsers which resulted in items been added to lists (eg DNS servers list) twice.
Jul 19, 2006 | SpamTitan News
Remarks
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Before upgrading, please read all release notes that apply to versions more recent that the currently installed version on your system
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Required previous version is 4.01
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Existing configuration will not be changed
New/Changed/Improved
Jul 17, 2006 | SpamTitan News
Remarks
- Before upgrading, please read all release notes that apply to versions more recent that the currently installed version on your system
- Required previous version is 4.00
- Existing configuration will not be changed
New/Changed/Improved
- New: Maximum license usage is now displayed on the License page. This shows the maximum number of internal email addresses that have been processed as clean mail in one day.
- Update: ClamAV virus engine update to 0.88.3. This release includes a number of bug fixes.
- Update: Spamassassin engine updated to 3.1.3. This release contains several important bug fixes over the previous version.
- Fix: Resolved issue where quarantine report included listing of messages that where not quarantined. e.g. a policy dictating that a message be rejected without quarantining.
- Fix: Resolved issue adding outbound disclaimers.
- Fix: Resolved issue where the top mail recipients report included ‘Relay Denied’ recipients.
- Fix: Resolved issue where reports where not been archived.
- Fix: Resolved issue adding more that one static route.
- Fix (VMware): Resolved time synchronization problem on vmware machines where the virtual machine would lose time with its host machine. If using SpamTitan for VMware you must reboot the virtual machine after applying the update for this patch to work.
