About three years ago I started using an anti-spam / anti-virus filtering service known as Singlefin, now St. Bernard Software product called LivePrism. It has been the most amazing and reliable filtering solution that I have ever used and I have used a number of them including Postini and a the Unix SpamAssassin.
I called their corporate office to rave about their product and how much one of my clients in San Diego were just enamored with the service. Next thing you know I am a spokesperson for their product. (No I don’t get paid nor get a discount to mention them.) It really is just the best spam protection on the market and they have a 30 day trial, so what is there to loose?
Well there was a press release about their product and they mentioned me:
Singlefin Launches Free E-Mail Security Service for Businesses
Singlefin today announced the launch of its free e-mail filtering service for businesses. The hosted service provides enterprise-class anti-spam, anti-virus and technical support without the need for additional hardware or software, or any change in a company’s current ISP or e-mail provider. Businesses can provision themselves for the security service at the Singlefin website (www.singlefin.net) in less than 5 minutes.
Singlefin has been hosting e-mail and security services since 2001 and already operates the largest e-mail filtering service in the world with more than 5 billion messages analyzed daily through its patented reputation filters. Singlefin’s hosted security model stops viruses, spam and other malware before it clutters or compromises customers’ internal networks.
“We’ve been operating behind the scenes as the security engine for the major free e-mail companies — Juno, NetZero and BlueLight — where we are supporting more than 10.5 million users and billions of messages each day. So we know how the model works,”said Troy Getty, CEO of Singlefin. “But so far no one has offered business-grade e-mail filtering that can be provisioned instantly and comes with free technical support. We’re upping the ante.”
Singlefin provides e-mail filtering, IM filtering, Web filtering, anti-virus and anti-spam without the need for any hardware or software deployments. Singlefin accomplishes this feat by redirecting DNS or MX Records through Singlefin’s data centers and patented reputation filters, delivering only clean data traffic to customers’ networks. The service is designed for businesses with their own domain name, but it does not require any change in the existing ISP or e-mail provider.
What’s the Catch?
Unlike other free services, Singlefin does not subject its business customers to banner ads or forced e-mail marketing messages to cover the cost of running the free service. Instead, Singlefin’s motivation is to utilize the vast amount of free e-mail traffic to detect new spam and virus outbreaks and malware trends that provide new techniques for protecting its paying 10.5 million users. Simply put, the more messages that Singlefin analyzes, the better it gets at spotting spam, viruses, malware and malicious code. In addition, a percentage of free users choose to upgrade to Singlefin’s paid services which includes also IM filtering, Web filtering and more comprehensive e-mail features. Singlefin tested a similar free program in 2005 that generated 2 million new customers in less than four weeks.
“Our IT consultant recommended Singlefin’s service to us because it is an elegant way to solve our security issues,”said Jo Barsa, CEO of Barsa Technology Solutions and Barsa & Associates, CPA’s, a 15-person financial software and accounting firm in San Diego. “I was a bit skeptical at first about using something free for my business, but when I understood why Singlefin actually wants free users it made sense. I’ve since upgraded to the paid service so that I could take advantage of the IM filtering, Email Archive for compliance and a few other features. We’ve even started recommending it to our clients.”
“The Barsa companies can take advantage of the latest anti-virus and anti-spam technology without getting involved with any IT headaches,”explained Brad Slavin, VP Engineering of Skyriver Communication, the IT consultants to the Barsa companies. “Singlefin’s service is more comprehensive and more affordable than anything they could try to do in-house.”