MX Logic is selling an anti-spam service supported by the MX Logic Threat Center to deploy constantly evolving anti-spam techniques, aiming to rid end-users of e-mail's pesky, adaptable vermin.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 15, 2004]

Denver, Colo.-based anti-spam provider MX Logic was founded relatively recently, in April of 2002, but has already secured a key endorsement, that of reputable Toronto-based wholesaler and registrar TuCows.

It should be no surprise that the company started out on the right foot. The founders have significant hands-on e-mail experience. The company's CTO and CEO founded and ran massive e-mail provider USA.NET, whose business plan has gone through several permutations but still serves over 5,000 businesses. At its peak, claims the MX Logic website, USA.NET had over 33 million mailboxes and processed over 70 million messages each day.

We spoke with Scott Chasin, MX Logic CTO, whose achievement-studded resume includes founding and moderating the original Bugtraq list (which is now owned by Symantec).

Spam cost USA.NET a lot of money, Chasin says. "We had 80 TB of mail storage and 80 percent of it was junk. We were spending millions on EMC equipment just to make the junk readily available."

Chasin says that the key features MX Logic provides are an upgradeable anti-spam framework and a user-friendly spam quarantine for an ISP's end users.

MX Logic uses all of the currently popular filtering techniques, including Bayesian, heuristics, blacklists (RBLs), and user-maintained permit and deny lists. The company also works with checksum clearinghouses that fingerprint known spam. For anti-virus, the company partners with both McAfee and Sophos.

But the key idea is that these techniques can be augmented at any time. "The idea is to provide a foundation that can react quickly to new attacks and attack methods," explains Chasin.

The MX Logic Threat Center monitors the spam problem on a 24/7 basis, operating like an anti-virus provider's research arm.

The software runs on Linux and Sun Solaris, which looked good to Bruce Dorland, Tucows product manager for e-mail services. "We're primarily a Linux shop," he says. "Other anti-spam providers are Microsoft-only, which didn't fit our needs at all."

Dorland says ease of integration was also vital. "We build our business around our provisioning platform, OpenSRS. We use the APIs to integrate and provision e-mail defense seamlessly. Users continue to be billed as they were before through TuCows."

Chasin says that the product is particularly suitable for service providers with resellers, explaining that it handles multiple levels of resellers.

Dorland agrees. "We have a wide range of resellers. The product works out of the box, but it's customizable too. In setting policies, resellers can choose how to handle spam, for example, choosing whether to quarantine it or deny delivery. There's also a daily spam report that resellers can turn on or off."

"Resellers with corporate customers can choose to allow the user to log directly in to the system," he adds. "Or they can use the daily report to show each end user what was blocked."

The bottom line for resellers is the same as it is for ISPs. "Resellers want to minimize support costs and also eliminate spam," says Dorland.

Chasin points out that ISPs also need to cut costs by fighting spam, but protect their investment in the anti-spam infrastructure. "Ours is a framework that can grow with the threat," he says. "The rules change on a daily basis. Anti-spam techniques used two years ago may have lost 70 percent of their accuracy today."

Pricing and availability
MX Logic is available now. Pricing for this modular solution depends on options selected, and discounts are available for volume orders and multi-year contracts. A deployment with 250,000 users would cost between $1.50 and $2.00 per user per year.

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