News & Events

StrongMail Systems Calls for Industry Adoption of Sender ID. Sees New Challenges Ahead for Legitimate Senders.

REDWOOD SHORES , CA — June 28, 2005 — As a strong proponent of accountability in email, StrongMail Systems applauds Microsoft for its leadership on email authentication. StrongMail Systems believes Microsoft’s June 22 announcement on taking a more assertive stance toward senders who do not authenticate their email was a necessary and important step. At long last, it puts the legitimate sending community on the road toward establishing sender accountability, ending abusive email practices, and restoring consumer confidence in the email medium.

While not without its imperfections, StrongMail Systems believes that Sender ID is a straightforward, easily implemented solution that should be adopted now. The email industry cannot afford further debate and delay while other more perfect and secure solutions are developed. Therefore, StrongMail Systems, calls on all legitimate senders and service providers to implement Sender ID and on those in the receiver community – especially the other major ISPs – to follow Microsoft’s lead in making Sender ID authentication a required part of the new ecology for email.

For its part, StrongMail Systems continues to champion email authentication and other industry efforts to establish standards and restore trust to the email medium. The company will be collaborating with other industry leaders as an underwriter of the Email Authentication Implementation Summit 2005 to be held next month in New York. StrongMail was also one of the first to embed both Sender ID and Domain Keys authentication in its email infrastructure solution, and will be shortly testing the combined spec of Yahoo and Cisco to perfect a signature-based solution. The company is working closely with the providers of reputation ratings to make their services available to its clients as well.

Further, StrongMail Systems is actively engaged in the efforts of Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) and Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) to curb abusive and fraudulent email practices. The company is also a member of the steering committee for the Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC). StrongMail Systems’ vice president of marketing, Dave Lewis, co-chairs the ESPC committee that evaluates reputation services and was an author of the position statement on authentication that urged the type of assertive action Microsoft has taken. (To view the statement, see http://www.espcoalition.org/eaps.php.)

To underscore the importance of email authentication, Dave Lewis noted, “With the industry finally moving forward with email authentication, the day of reckoning for spammers is not far off. Once the senders of email can be definitively identified, they’ll be held accountable for their practices. Senders will be assigned a ‘reputation score’ somewhat akin to a credit rating, and that rating will affect their cost of sending email – directly through a bond, e-postage or other fee or indirectly through denied access or poor (junk box) placement. While intended to get rid of spam, these measures will also fundamentally alter how legitimate senders of email use the medium too.”

“The ability of legitimate senders to support IP-based and soon signature-based authentication is only the opening salvo,” said Frank Addante, CEO of StrongMail Systems. “They’ll also need to support reputation ratings, smarter customer feedback and bounce management, dynamic content for relevant messaging, and the kind of intelligent, differentiated sending that the new classes of mail and domain access rules will demand. Moreover, senders will need to capture, interpret and act on data faster than ever before to meet rising consumer expectations and ensure regulatory compliance. These are all outbound infrastructure challenges that will require much more powerful, technologically advanced sending platforms designed for tight integration and optimized for email delivery. But they’re challenges that the legitimate senders must address to survive in the new era of email accountability.”

About StrongMail Systems, Inc.

StrongMail Systems, the innovation leader in email infrastructure software, is the only company that has solved the email challenge at its core, thereby empowering businesses to fix, enhance and extend their email communications. StrongMail Systems has pioneered the email application server - the industry's first complete, fully integrated infrastructure solution for outbound email. Companies use StrongMail software to email-enable disparate business assets, and deliver marketing messages, order confirmations, and other transactional communications seamlessly and in real-time. StrongMail is application agnostic and easily integrates with CRM, e-commerce and financial applications, as well as custom developed solutions to unlock the potential of email for enterprises, service providers and ISV's. Founded in 2002, StrongMail Systems is privately held and funded by Globespan Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital and Evercore Ventures. The Company is headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, and can be found on the Web at www.strongmail.com.

Contact

Schwartz Communications for StrongMail Systems, Inc.
Dara Sklar or Christine Wright
415-512-0770
strongmail@schwartz-pr.com