VANCOUVER, BC, 2003/08/20
As students head back to school this fall, many will experience a dramatic decrease in the volume of Spam and viruses that land in their email in-box. Behind the scenes, the IT departments of leading institutions world-wide are taking control of their email with PureMessage, a server-based email filtering solution by ActiveState.
ActiveState provides anti-Spam software to more than 80 of the world's largest and most prestigious educational institutions, including: Duke University, Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University, New York University, University of North Carolina, University of Washington, Texas A&M, Temple University, University of Leeds, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. PureMessage is also used by hundreds of leading corporations worldwide.
Scalability and Reliability
The education sector is challenged by the need to stop the growing spam problem with limited budgets and resources. However, many IT departments at educational institutions operate on a scale similar to a Fortune 500 company, serving up to tens of thousands of users, all of whom require access to email, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Heterogeneous IT infrastructures across multiple departments and schools, and the use of a variety of UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh email clients, often create a diverse and complex environment in which to deploy new products.
PureMessage by ActiveState provides a cost-effective, comprehensive email filtering solution for the education sector that scales to accommodate hundreds of thousands of users, and can be easily integrated with existing systems. Using a unique combination of heuristics, spam directories, spam signatures, and learning algorithms, PureMessage safely identifies and quarantines more than 98% of spam. As a result, schools ensure computer resources are being used efficiently and end-users regain productivity losses caused by spam. Customers are also attracted to PureMessage's per-CPU licensing, which further reduces costs by removing the need to track and report individual users. Ranked as College of the Year among Research Institutions, Indiana University advocates the PureMessage solution. Says Rob Henderson, associate facilities director for the Computer Science department, "The utility versus cost of PureMessage is exceptional. I would not hesitate to recommend PureMessage to my educational colleagues."
Protecting Academic Freedom and Privacy
In recent months, academic IT departments have become overwhelmed with spam complaints from end users, elevating internal concerns about the institution's reputation as a thought-leader, and introducing the possibility of lawsuits related to unsolicited email. Yet many schools have a policy protecting academic freedom and privacy, which must be balanced with the need to protect their IT infrastructures and end users.
Using the "tag and pass" option, PureMessage automates the spam identification process, while providing the ability for end users to determine how they want to handle such messages. "Whether you're an administrator managing an international business school, or a student communicating with a professor online, email has become just as important function in academia as it has in the workplace and the home. That function is being threatened by spammers' ability to evolve new spam techniques, and obtain valid student and faculty email addresses over the Internet," said Chris Kraft, director of PureMessage product management, ActiveState. "PureMessage provides the education sector with a cost-effective solution to define, monitor, and manage their email."