Press Release
POSTINI MESSAGE SECURITY AND MANAGEMENT UPDATE REPORTS THAT IN SEPTEMBER UP TO FIFTY THOUSAND INTERNET-CONNECTED COMPUTERS SIMULTANEOUSLY EXHIBITED MALICIOUS BEHAVIOR
Spam, Phishing and Virus Attacks Rise to 80 Percent of All Email in September
SAN CARLOS, CA, October 20, 2006 – Postini, the industry's leading provider of on-demand Integrated Message Management services that make electronic communications like email, instant messaging (IM) and the web more compliant, productive, secure and reliable, today announced in its Monthly Message Security & Management Update that in September the company tracked, at any given time, 50,000 unique computers on the Internet that were simultaneously exhibiting malicious behavior such as attempting to propagate spam, viruses, phishing and other attacks against email communications. The company also reported that in September, in total, hundreds of thousands of unique computers on the Internet demonstrated malicious behavior, and that on average, each of these computers became active and attacked for two hours before becoming dormant again.
The Postini Threat Identification Network (PTIN) protects Postini's clients by proactively monitoring and identifying in real-time malicious computers on the Internet. Unlike real-time black lists (RBLs), which involve static, out-of-date lists, or on-premises software, which receives periodic updates, Postini's real-time repository of offending computers is updated every few seconds, providing superior protection against the broadest range of email threats.
"At any given moment in September, Postini was tracking 50,000 computers that were exhibiting signs of malicious behavior, which allows us to protect our customers' email communications from an ever-increasing onslaught of threats," said Scott Petry, founder, chief technical officer and executive vice president of product development at Postini. "With real-time visibility into more than one billion messages per day across the more than 36,000 global businesses using Postini, we are in a unique position to detect and prevent the broadest range of threats hours or days before the competition."
In September, Postini blocked a total of nearly seven billion spam email messages – an average of 80 percent of all email scanned and an increase of 1.6 percent from August.
Geographically, the top five global regions reporting high-levels of malicious activity in September included Seoul, Korea; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Beijing, China; Herndon, Virginia; and Tokyo, Japan.
Postini's PREEMPT™ multi-layer anti-virus technology blocked 22 million viruses for September, or 0.44 percent of all email scanned for the month.
The top five viruses for September were:
| Virus Name | Quantity Blocked |
| netsky | 4,078,646 |
| mytob | 2,880,131 |
| bagle variants | 2,541,480 |
| mime | 2,427,418 |
| mydoom | 1,495,505 |
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 on-demand 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.
