Messaging News - August 2008 - (Page 37) three years and 75 million messages, it was clear that the stand-alone firewall could not keep up with the increased traffic or the growing sophistication of spammers. Complaints from email users began to soar, and the district decided to look for a complementary solution. The Solution “We wanted to test solutions that took an innovative approach instead of using the same signature-based algorithm as our current firewall,” explains Chien Shih, ease of use. They particularly liked Abaca’s flexible quarantine feature, which blocks questionable email, but allows users to easily retrieve any messages they want to see. Abaca’s intuitive, user-friendly interface got high marks from the test group as well. “We purposely picked email users who would be hard to please, the ones who complained the loudest about the spam filling up their mailboxes,” says Shih. “After testing Abaca’s solution, they started sending us letters of thanks and congratulations instead of complaints.” “We purposely picked email users who would be hard to please, the ones who complained the loudest about the spam filling up their mailboxes. After testing Abaca’s solution, they started sending us letters of thanks and congratulations instead of complaints.” —Chien Shih, Foothill-De Anza Community College District director of information technology for Foothill-De Anza Community College District. “Abaca’s receiverbased technology really stood out. Instead of scanning for patterns, it examines the relationships between people who exchange email. When something out of the ordinary happens, it checks for spam.” Foothill-De Anza’s information technology (IT) team decided to test the Abaca appliance and networked service solution side-by-side with one other wellknown anti-spam solution. First, they identified 26 to 30 email users to serve as the test group. Next, they established the testing methodology, which included both statistical analysis and subjective feedback, e.g., false positive rate, spam not blocked, ease of use, and subjective feedback from users. After collecting baseline statistics, the IT team tested each anti-spam product for 30 days. At the end of each test, they collected another set of statistics, as well as user feedback, about the pros and cons of each solution. In the end, it wasn’t even close. Abaca emerged as the clear winner on all fronts. The Results “The statistics we got back from the Abaca test really surprised us,” recalls Shih. “Abaca’s false positive rate was 0.17 percent, and the spam not blocked rate was 0.79 percent. Less than 1 percent! The other solution we tested gave us statistical results of 1.87 percent and 2.54 percent, respectively. That’s a huge difference given the enormous amount of email coming into our district.” The district’s test group also gave Abaca’s appliance and networked service solution superior marks for In addition to delivering superior performance, Abaca trounced the competition on price and total cost of ownership. Not only is Abaca’s appliance and networked service solution less expensive than the other solution Foothill-De Anza tested, it also is a self-mentoring system that updates itself automatically and requires virtually no ongoing system administration. Given the district’s limited IT budget and resources, Abaca’s dynamic teach-to-learn capability was welcome news for Shih. Based on these impressive test results, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District decided to implement the enterprise-class Abaca EPG 3000 with ReceiverNet Premium Service alongside its existing firewall for all of the district’s faculty, staff and services personnel. TMP FOR YOUR REFERENCE Abaca Technology Corporation www.abaca.com About Foothill-De Anza Community College District Founded more than 50 years ago and located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District serves the cities of Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Stanford, Sunnyvale, and parts of San Jose. messagingnews.com 37 http://www.abaca.com http://www.messagingnews.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.