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Mirapoint Raises the Bar for Spam Protection with Full-Spectrum™ Email Security Technology
Multi-Layered Approach Delivers Unparalleled Effectiveness In Easy-to-Manage Appliance

SUNNYVALE, Calif., November 3, 2003 -Mirapoint today announced its new Full-Spectrum™ email security technology, which sets a new industry standard for spam protection by combining powerful spam analysis, identification, filtering, and management features to deliver better than 96 percent effectiveness with near-zero false positives. Deployed on Mirapoint's integrated hardware and software appliances, the Full-Spectrum technology offers enterprise, service provider, education, and government customers a multi-layered approach to addressing spam at the email gateway, while providing personalized controls so end-users can individually define what is spam to avoid lost messages and further improve effectiveness.

More than 50 customers worldwide have selected the Full-Spectrum technology, which represents approximately one million mailboxes now using Mirapoint solutions to defend against spam. Current users of Full-Spectrum include key enterprises including Centra Health, Ford and Illinois Tool Works Inc.; key service providers Integra Telecom, THUS and Nasstar; as well as key education customers such as College of William and Mary, University of Georgia and Wayne State University.

The Mirapoint Full-Spectrum technology includes features for mail server and gateway-level spam protection, specialized spam recognition and tagging intelligence, personalized end-user controls for spam management, powerful content filtering and policy enforcement tools, as well as security hardening to defend against hackers. For customers with an existing mail server investment, like Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino/Notes, the Mirapoint Message Director appliance can be deployed in minutes to secure incoming and outgoing SMTP traffic. For customers that have standardized on the Mirapoint Message Server for email services including desktop email, web and wireless access, group calendaring and Outlook synchronization, the Full-Spectrum technology is available as a licensed add-on.

"We were looking for a comprehensive approach to email security and spam protection, one that could scale to meet both our present and future requirements," said Jody Hobbs, enterprise architect at Centra Health. "We evaluated many of the anti-spam point products available today, but none provided end-to-end security protection in an appliance form-factor like Mirapoint. Now in deployment for 4,000 employees, the Mirapoint Message Director works seamlessly with our existing Lotus Notes email server, and allows us to mix the intelligence of heuristic rules-based scanning, content-level filtering, and integrated virus protection to offer the best possible protection for our message network."

"At the University of Georgia, email is critical for online communications and collaboration between our students, faculty and staff. For this reason, we can't let email-borne threats, including spam and viruses, put the reliability of our message network at risk and potentially impact campus-wide productivity," said Greg Ashley, executive director and assistant chief information officer of enterprise informational technology services at University of Georgia. "By standardizing on the Mirapoint Message Server and Message Director, we've been able to leverage Mirapoint's integrated architecture and the Full-Spectrum technology for delivering a broad range of secure and reliable email services for our 45,000 users."

Benefits of Full-Spectrum Spam Protection
Mirapoint's Full-Spectrum technology is designed for customers that require a highly effective, multi-layered approach to email security and spam protection. With this new technology, Mirapoint leverages its extensive experience with email protocols like SMTP and its leadership in email and security appliances. Key features of Mirapoint's Full-Spectrum technology include:

• Heuristic rules-based scanning: The Mirapoint technology analyzes messages based on information in the header, envelope, subject, attachments, and then scores the risk accordingly. If the score exceeds a defined threshold, the message gets tagged as spam and the appropriate action is then taken on the message. Mirapoint's expertise in email in combination with the Full-Spectrum technology's powerful heuristic rules-based scanning allows the Mirapoint solution to achieve 96% effectiveness with near-zero false positives.
• Flexible message handling: With the Mirapoint approach, IT managers can take the most appropriate action based on the magnitude of the filtering score, such as block, delete, forward, discard, remove attachments, or tag the message in the header or subject line.
• Custom rules: Mirapoint provides both end users and IT staff with the ability to customize spam protection and filtering. End users can develop their own white and black lists, and create personal filtering rules. IT managers can adjust the spam threshold to be optimized for their company's message traffic, develop unique domain or system-level white and black lists, create custom content filters, as well as work with Mirapoint to create custom rules if needed.
• Report spam to vendor: The Mirapoint solution includes easy-to-use tools that allow IT managers and end-users to identify spam and report newly identified spam characteristics to Mirapoint. In response, Mirapoint then creates new spam rules that are automatically provided to customers via network-based updates.
• Denial of Service (DOS) protection: During a DOS attack, repetitive access attempts from a single person can prevent an entire enterprise of users from accessing their mailboxes. Mirapoint monitors how quickly SMTP requests are issued from a single IP address and can automatically block or throttle any address that exceeds a defined rate. The system can also block any commercial message based on its IP address, domain of origin, or specific email address, stopping unwanted email before it enters the network.
• Security alerts: Notifications can be configured to notify an IT manager in the event of a spam or DOS attack. For example, Mirapoint customers were able to stop the SoBig virus from spreading itself through outgoing messages by responding to these security alerts and then taking action by blocking the 'infected' users' email account or IP address.
• Detailed logging and reporting: Mirapoint logging and reporting capabilities keep IT managers informed of how well various spam blocking and other email security functions are working. For example, Mirapoint provides a web-based graph that shows spam traffic versus regular email and detailed logs with rich information on logging and early clues about new security attacks. Histogram data provides a modeling tool, so administrators can evaluate spam catch-rates at various adjustable thresholds and tune their Mirapoint deployment for optimal effectiveness.

Pricing and Availability
Spam protection with Mirapoint's Full-Spectrum technology is available immediately for the Mirapoint Message Director or Message Server products. Pricing is based on the number of users with discounts available for volume purchases. To take advantage of the new functionality, new and existing customers need to install Mirapoint Messaging Operating System version 3.3 or later, and apply the appropriate Mirapoint license key provided upon purchase.

About Mirapoint
Mirapoint® is a leader in solutions for message networks used by service provider, enterprise, education and government institutions. Customers use Mirapoint solutions to build message networks that intelligently route, store, access and manage Internet messages, including email. Mirapoint is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The company has more than 600 customers worldwide. For more information on Mirapoint, visit its Web site at http://www.mirapoint.com/.

2007 Mirapoint, Inc.  All rights reserved. All company and product names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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