McAfee, Inc. Receives Checkmark PREMIUM Anti-Spam Certification

McAfee, Inc. Receives Checkmark PREMIUM Anti-Spam Certification

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ McAfee, Inc. (NYSE: MFE), the leading dedicated security technology company, today announced that McAfee® has received a Checkmark PREMIUM Anti-Spam Certification for accurately detecting 97.0% of spam in independent testing performed by West Coast Labs.

The test methodology was developed by West Coast Labs to generate a result similar to that which a customer is likely to experience if they are running McAfee's product on their own network. Real-world streams of live legitimate email and spam were delivered to each of the products that West Coast Labs tested. This cutting edge methodology is used by West Coast Labs in all its anti-spam product tests.

"McAfee Secure Messaging Gateway with the anti-spam module effectively blocked 97% of spam from the test suite to achieve the Checkmark PREMIUM certification standard a very high percentage considering that the test was conducted under real-world conditions with streams of live mail and spam going to the product," said Chris Thomas, operations director of West Coast Labs. "Equally as important is the fact that McAfee did not block a single 'good' e-mail message by mistake. There were no false-positives."

Since April 2005, McAfee anti-spam products have been utilizing domain name reputation technology to help accurately distinguish spam from non-spam. McAfee developed domain name reputation technology in 2004 because traditional content-based filtering techniques, such as heuristics and header analysis, were becoming less effective in the face of increasingly devious and well-designed spam messages. The domain name reputation technique examines the URLs within each e-mail message and blocks those messages that contain links to malicious or spammer web sites. The technique works to block spam, phishing messages, and messages containing links to malicious payloads like spyware.

McAfee delivers domain name reputation information to its customers via streaming updates. When McAfee initiated streaming updates in April 2005, McAfee's customers saw a dramatic improvement in their spam block rate. The high block rates have been confirmed by two different West Coast Labs tests one in October 2005, when McAfee's product beat the previous market leader, CipherTrust, and this more recent test which put McAfee in the top class of nine different vendors.

McAfee's unique implementation of domain name reputation technology has the ability to predict malicious and/or spammer web sites even before the web sites have been involved in a spam campaign. Thus, McAfee products can block even "day zero" spam.

"McAfee has once again proven its industry leading capabilities when tested in real-world environments," said Vimal Solanki, senior director of product marketing, McAfee, Inc. "Our research and development team is able to stay one step ahead of the spammers with new, effective techniques."

McAfee anti-spam technologies are available in multiple form factors software, appliances and managed services to suit the needs of different types of customers.

• McAfee Secure Messaging Service for Small Business is ideal for those businesses that place a high value on ease-of-implementation. This 100% managed service offers the same high spam block rate as McAfee's premises-based solutions, with nothing to be installed or maintained by the customer.
• McAfee's Secure Internet Gateway appliance is well suited for mid-size organizations in need of a comprehensive solution for both email and web security. Based on earlier tests of this product by Network World Magazine and the West Coast Labs recent 97% rating, the appliance has the highest anti-spyware effectiveness in the industry.
• Large organizations requiring high message throughput and granular content filtering policies can choose McAfee's appliance solution, McAfee Secure Messaging Gateway and/or McAfee's managed service, Secure Messaging Service for Enterprise. Increasingly, large customers are choosing to use both in-the-cloud and perimeter security, for maximum scalability and layered protection.
• McAfee's software-based SpamKiller products are also available for a variety of points in the network, including mail server and gateway.

Unlike anti-spam solutions, which require extensive training and tuning, McAfee anti-spam products are almost completely automatic and achieve high spam block rates out-of-the-box. McAfee updates its anti-spam products around-the-clock to maintain a high block rate. Typically the updates happen every ten minutes.

The Checkmark PREMIUM Anti-Spam certification by West Coast Labs is just the latest in a series of awards won by McAfee, Inc.

• In November, 2005, McAfee® Secure Messaging Gateway (SMG) appliance was rated number one by West Coast Labs in anti-spam testing against CipherTrust's IronMail appliance.
• In October 2005, McAfee Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) was awarded Network Testing Lab's top rating for overall gateway protection. It stopped 90% of spyware, 95% of spam, and 100% of viruses attempting to penetrate the network through web and email.
• In September 2005, McAfee Secure Web Gateway (SWG) was awarded Network World's Clear Choice Award for the best enterprise anti-spyware product out of sixteen tested.

The report from West Coast Labs that describes their test methodology and the results obtained by McAfee anti-spam is posted to http://www.mcafee.com/us/local_content/white_papers/wp_checkmark_premium_as_cert.pdf

About West Coast Labs

West Coast Labs is an independent organization which tests and validates the functionality and performance of information security products. West Coast Labs has also developed the Checkmark certification system into one of the world's foremost certification programs an integrated system of standards that are recognized around the world as reliable indicators of performance levels. For more information, visit: www.westcoastlabs.org.

About McAfee, Inc.

McAfee, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the leading dedicated security technology company, delivers proactive and proven solutions and services that secure systems and networks around the world. With its unmatched security expertise and commitment to innovation, McAfee empowers home users, businesses, the public sector, and service providers with the ability to block attacks, prevent disruptions, and continuously track and improve their security. www.mcafee.com.

NOTE: McAfee is a registered trademark of McAfee, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. McAfee Red in connection with security is distinctive of McAfee brand products. All other registered and unregistered trademarks herein are the sole property of their respective owners.

SOURCE McAfee, Inc.