Red Condor Swoops Down On Spam

Company:

Headquarters: Rohnert Park, Calif.

Technology Sector: Security

Key Product: Message Assurance Gateway

Year Founded: 2003

Number of Channel Partners: 135 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: Red Condor's e-mail security software—available via a network appliance or as a hosted service—promises protection against spam, viruses, identity theft and other security plagues.

The Lowdown: Security vendor Red Condor isn't content to filter out spam messages from a user's inbox. The company doesn't want them arriving in the first place and is hoping VARs feel the same way.

Red Condor offers a hosted service, as well as an appliance for customers that want more control of their e-mail on premise. Rather than relying solely on a search for forbidden words, the company says its

technology requires messages to pass through consecutive layers of SMTP session-level defenses, content analysis, virus detection, sender profiling and other filtering before reaching the recipient's inbox. Another feature is outbound filtering, which helps identify if a PC has been hijacked and is sending out spam illegally.

Version 6.0 of its e-mail security software, recently released, provides greater configuration control of security and advanced discovery features, and gives hosted service customers the option to filter outbound messages.

"E-mail filtering has gone from 'I don't want the junk' to 'My computer may be part of an illegal network spamming the world.' It's a serious concern, and your network can be blacklisted by ISPs that take it very seriously," said Chris Gardner, director of channel development at Red Condor.

Blacklisting is of particular concern to customers using shared co-location services to house their infrastructure, Gardner said.

"They could be blacklisted when it's someone else on the e-mail server doing it," he said. "If you get blacklisted, it's not a 20-minute phone call with the ISP [to clear it up]. It can take days, and the cost to companies can be astounding."

Red Condor offers a three-tier channel program, with discounts of 20 percent, 27 percent and 35 percent for the bronze, silver and gold levels, respectively. There's also a registration program where VARs can sign customers up for a 30-day trial and then have protection on that client from competitors.

Many of Red Condor's current partners focus on Web consulting, so the company now is looking to add more full-service security-focused solution providers. "I want to extend my channel to partners that are selling firewalls, Web filtering solutions and are a technical adviser for their clients. That's a piece Red Condor has not focused on," Gardner said.

Mike Kane, owner of WorkgroupIT, a Los Gatos, Calif.-based solution provider, said Red Condor's technology is sound.

"The differentiation that was important to me was the distinction between [blocking] spam [using] filtering vs. using a honeypot technology that knows it's a spammer," Kane said. "An e-mail may have a key word, but it may not be spam at all. The honeypot technology is based on Red Condor detecting and knowing who the spammers are and blocking them before they can deliver the mail, which is more productive for the end user."

KLH Consulting started selling Red Condor in 2006 after trying several antispam solutions, said Stephanie Garzoli, operations manager at the Santa Rosa, Calif.-based solution provider.

"Productivity improves for our clients as a direct result of receiving far fewer unwanted e-mails, some estimate upward of 90 percent," she said. "Unlike some competitive appliances, there is virtually no management time required once Red Condor is properly configured."