Engate targets botnet protocols

Anti-spam provider Engate today announced version 3.6 of its flagship package, Engate MailSentinel, which it said allows firms to instantly detect botnets and stop the delivery of email-borne attacks such as spam, viruses and worms at the protocol level.

"As innovative as botnets are, they have weaknesses and no matter how well designed they are to evade and propagate, every botnet leaves a telltale activity trace," said Engate spokesman Tony dellaBusa. The new version of MailSentinel provides the upgraded functionality by significant enhancements to the proprietary GlobalRules database, said Engate.

DellaBusa pointed out that with the new database additions, MailSentinel could discriminate between hosts that are sending mail and hosts that should not be sending mail. "We use a variety of tools and proprietary techniques to identify the function of every IP address that's in that network. We then create efficient rules to block the connections coming for those identified IP addresses," added dellaBusa.

Engate is targeting the system at both enterprises and ISPs, saying that for enterprises the system would reduce bandwidth and storage costs, conserve IT resources and improve user productivity by reducing the time dealing with spam on the desktop, laptop and PDAs. As for customers, dellaBusa pointed to the fact that IBM had been shipping the product through its Lotus Foundation product line since 3 June.

Engate is offering a free trial of its system, with registrants having the option for an on-premise or a hosted trial.