From the archive · 23 January 2008
2007: when we were already auditing email
The Q4 2007 threat report and 100% detection in independent audits by Commtouch and AV-Test. Empirical verification was already the house hallmark.
In 2007, robot programs (botnets) became established globally, built on sophisticated peer-to-peer networks that dynamically avoid being listed as spam and strike back at anyone trying to take note of them.
The most harmful botnet so far was seeded by a storm of worms and has been used to evade spam, malware, phishing, and even to carry out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Botnets are responsible for keeping spam levels high worldwide, averaging 80% over the year and reaching up to 96% at peak hours at the start of the fourth quarter of 2007.
The year ended with another spike, driven by a series of outbreaks of holiday-themed emails.
Mission accomplished; in 2007 we achieved 100% effectiveness in virus detection and filtering, coming first in the various audits carried out by Commtouch and AV-Test http://www.av-test.org, well ahead of any other system.
Our system, which runs on top of alt-n's Security Plus platform, features real-time virus detection and zero-hour protection against viruses, spam, spyware and phishing, completely transparently to the user
Today, in 2026
Those quarterly reports are today the periodic per-domain DMARC report of our email security service. In 2007 the figure we chased was virus detection; today it is email authentication, and across the domains we manage DMARC protection reaches 95–100%. The doctrine hasn't changed: protect, measure and prove it with data.
Email security →