Tech Shout!

BT, one of the world’s leading providers of communications solutions has taken the role of a pioneer in the global battle against spam by implementing the first ever fully-automated ‘spam buster’ system. The ‘spam buster’ system will help to track down and tackle professional spammers and ‘botnet’-infected customers on the BT broadband network.

Nowadays, around 80 per cent of e-mails received via the Internet are spam, and these unwanted e-mails are not only generated by professional spammers, but also ‘Botnets’. The use of Botnets is an upcoming trend amongst hardcore spammers, where the PCs of unsuspecting users are secretly infected with rogue software to form a robotic network that generates vast quantities of unwanted spam. These machines can then be used to attack other PCs and websites.

Content Forensics from StreamShield Networks is the new spam detection system adopted by BT. It scans millions of e-mails each day, and provides BT with detailed reports on the location and size of the problems faced by BT concerning spam.

So the solution provided by StreamShield Networks called Content Forensics helps to save time and resources by automatically identifying spam problems. It can also prevent valuable bandwidth from being wasted on unwanted spam and virus-infected traffic.

“Our Content Forensics solution has been developed with large ISPs such as BT in mind and delivers a powerful solution to the problem of professional spammers and botnets on ISP’s broadband networks”, says Simon Gawne, CEO StreamShield Networks. “We are excited that BT has selected our solution after extensive testing in their network and we look forward to working with them in the future.”

After receiving daily reports, BT’s Customer Security team can take immediate action against professional spam operators. Action could involve terminating rogue accounts and adding offending IP addresses to industry-wide blacklists.

Due to such a technology, BT will now be able to focus more of contacting and helping their customers to get rid of botnet infections on their PCs. And this in turn will reduce the likelihood of e-mail traffic from BT networks being blocked by other providers and third party e-mail systems.

“In a world-first, we’re turning the tables on professional spammers and cutting off this scourge of the internet at source”, said Stratis Scleparis, CTO at BT Retail. “We are delighted to work with StreamShield Networks on this innovative approach which both tracks down and reduces spam messages on our network, and at the same time helps our customers overcome the threat of infection by bots.”