Iconix Adds Fraud Filtering to SP Guard to Block Spear-Phishing Attacks
Feature Protects Users from Falling for Fake Messages
San Jose, California — Sept 26, 2011 — ICONIX, Inc., the industry leader in visual email
solutions, announced today that it has added fraud filtering capability to SP GuardTM, its spear-phishing defense
product. Now, in addition to highlighting legitimate messages with an icon in the inbox, enterprises will be able to
block fraudulent messages pretending to be from their organization or their trusted partners.
Recent security breaches at many major enterprises have been widely reported in the press. Cisco's June 2011 study,
"Email Attacks: This Time It's Personal", reported that suspicious emails with suspicious links are being replaced by
highly targeted emails that do not rely on obvious ploys to steal credentials. McAfee documented many of these breaches
in an August 2011 white paper entitled "Revealed: Operation Shady RAT", which highlighted more than 70 targeted
intrusions into governments, corporations and non-profits.
The common thread in these security breaches was spear-phishing emails that allowed malware to gain entry into the
systems. Criminals are moving from high volumes of ineffective emails to small numbers of well-crafted highly personalized
messages that are indistinguishable from legitimate email. The problem is no longer recipient gullibility, but the
inability to tell good emails from bad emails.
"At Iconix our core expertise is combining email authentication methods with display technology to identify legitimate
email senders," said Jeff Wilbur, vice-president of marketing at Iconix. "Our customers have asked us to extend this
capability to actually block fraudulent messages from being seen, which further protects users and their organizations
from being compromised, so we have added fraud filtering to SP Guard to do just that. This additional protection is
becoming increasingly important given the latest generation of highly targeted spear-phishing emails which are so well
crafted that users cannot tell real from fake."
SP Guard with fraud filtering is available immediately from Iconix, Inc. More information is available at http://www.iconix.com/business/spearphishing.php.
About ICONIX, Inc.
ICONIX, Inc. is the leading provider of trusted email identification solutions. ICONIX provides the industry's first visual solution for
businesses and consumers. The patented Iconix® solution enables recipients to quickly identify messages from legitimate senders,
which proactively combats widespread email-based identity theft techniques, such as phishing. The Iconix® Truemark® service
is the only standards-based visual authentication solution that works across various email platforms. For more information, visit www.iconix.com.
Iconix, Truemark, the Iconix logo and the Check-lock icon are registered trademarks in the United States and
Iconix, Check-lock, the Iconix logo, SP Guard, the Iconix enabled logo, and the Check-lock icon are trademarks or
service marks of ICONIX, Inc.
