Abaca Takes New Approach to Spam

By Greg McNevin

October 25, 2007: The Abaca Technology Corporation in the US is promising new levels of spam protection for SMBs, claiming that its solution can put the kibosh on 99 percent of spam.

The company says its new Email Protection Gateway guarantees 99 percent accuracy (the highest in the industry) with less than one false positive in 20,000 emails.

To do this, the solution makes use of a specialised algorithm that uses receiver reputation to differentiate spam from legitimate messages, as well as blocking viruses and phishing attacks.

The core of this solutions is the firm’s Email Protection Gateway is ReceiverNet, a proprietary technology that works in any language to protect SMBs from existing and future spam techniques.

The technology operates on the principle that an email message is more likely to be legitimate if it is sent to recipients that typically receive a low percentage of spam. Conversely, an email message is more likely to be spam when sent to recipients that typically receive a high percentage of spam. ReceiverNet rates messages based on each user’s overall ratio of legitimate messages to spam messages.

Typical anti-spam solutions use blacklists and whitelists for filtration, however, these can quickly become outdated. According to Abaca, ReceiverNet continues to learn and gain in accuracy as it tracks spam statistics for each user added to its network.

Cutting obvious questions off at the pass, Steve Kirsch, the founder, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer of Abaca says that “Many people regard the email security industry as already overcrowded. However, we’re not just another entrant using the same ineffective technologies everyone else does.”

Kirsch claims Abaca's approach to spam filtering is novel, simple, and highly effective. “We are first to market with a disruptive new technology that virtually eliminates spam—and we are offering it at a price point that is extremely competitive for small to medium businesses.”

The solution is available for between US$495 (AU$550) and US$3,945 (AU$4,390) depending on the level of protection required.

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