Press Release
POSTINI MESSAGE SECURITY AND MANAGEMENT UPDATE SHOWS ESCALATING ATTACKS ON PUBLIC INSTANT MESSAGING
IM Attacks Jump 160 Percent in July; Email Encryption Continues to Pick Up Momentum
SAN CARLOS, CA, August 7, 2006 – Postini, the global leader in Integrated Message Management, today announced that its Monthly Message Security & Management Update for July confirms a 160 percent increase over June in instant messaging (IM) attacks against corporate networks. In July, Postini detected and prevented new IM threats including Prokeylogger, which logs the keystrokes typed by the user, captures passwords and screenshots, and sends them to identity thieves.
Postini also noted in July a continuing rise in encrypted email traffic, as organizations around the world increasingly use encryption to protect sensitive communications with their business partners, contractors, regulators and remote employees. Postini processed more than 325 million encrypted messages in July, representing eight percent of all valid email messages and a 13 percent increase in encrypted traffic over the prior month.
The ability to encrypt email, based on an industry standard called Transport Layer Security (TLS), is built into every modern email server and is easy and free to use. Postini research shows that while the use of TLS to encrypt email messages continues to increase month over month, today nearly 90 percent of businesses worldwide have simply failed to turn on the TLS functionality available to them for free on their email servers.
Postini takes TLS one step further by allowing companies to guarantee secured email exchange with anyone – both for trusted business partners and for recipients whose encryption support is unknown. This is important because standard TLS will revert to unencrypted communication if the recipient email server does not have TLS enabled. Postini can prevent this from happening, guaranteeing that no sensitive messages are ever sent in the clear over the Internet.
"It's a positive sign that every month more companies around the world are using TLS to encrypt their messages and protect their business information," said Andrew Lochart, senior director of solutions marketing at Postini. "Postini operates one of the world's largest secure email networks to help our clients protect their sensitive information and comply with corporate and regulatory policies."
In July, Postini processed more than 26 billion SMTP email connections with 62 percent blocked as Directory Harvest Attacks (DHAs) and other messages sent to non-existent recipients. Six billion messages were blocked as spam, an average of 77 percent of all email scanned. Utilizing its patented PREEMPT™ heuristic technology, Postini blocked more than 26 million viruses in July.
The top five viruses for July were:
| Virus Name | Quantity Blocked |
| Bagle | 4,750,765 |
| Netsky | 4,486,709 |
| Mytob | 3,442,408 |
| Mime | 2,660,331 |
| Mydoom | 1,562,106 |
Postini's StatTrak™ is available at www.postini.com/stats and provides the most up-to-date statistics on the latest viruses, spam and DHAs.
About Postini
Postini is the global leader in Integrated Message Management, providing compliance, security, availability, and visibility solutions for corporate email, instant messaging and web. Postini offers a complete suite of services including archiving, spam and virus blocking, content control, encryption, and business continuity. The company's powerful managed services infrastructure seamlessly integrates with customers' environment, providing uncompromising security for more companies than any other provider in the world. Postini's services protect organizations from a wide range of threats, reduce compliance and legal risks, ensure reliable communications, and enable the intelligent management and enforcement of enterprise policies that protect companies' intellectual property, reputations and business relationships. For more information please contact Postini at info@postini.com or visit http://www.postini.com.
