Spam-related Complaints Drop at the CGIAR After Implementing GateKeeper

The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a strategic alliance of countries, international and regional organizations, and private foundations supporting 15 international agricultural centers that work with national agricultural research systems and civil society organizations, including the private sector. The alliance mobilizes agricultural science to reduce poverty, foster human well-being, promote agricultural growth, and protect the environment. The CGIAR generates global public goods that are available to all. For more information, visit www.cgiar.org.

The Problem

The CGIAR produces critical information and farming technologies relevant to the needs of poor farmers in developing countries. Its research on crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, and food policy has resulted in such global achievements as the introduction of new types of maize, rice and wheat that improve health and help developing countries to cut food import costs. CGIAR technologies have helped reduce pesticide use in developing countries, and facilitated the rehabilitation of Afghanistan's agriculture. CGIAR has trained more than 75,000 scientists and researchers in developing countries, and much more.

At the foundation of this world-changing information and knowledge is a vast information and communications technology infrastructure. This infrastructure must enable thousands of the organization's geographically dispersed researchers and scientists to communicate and share information with one another quickly and reliably. What's more, for this dedicated network of researchers, anything that threatens the efficiency and effectiveness of this infrastructure is unacceptable.

That's why the CGIAR began collaborating with CGNET Services International, its long-time managed network services partner, to find a way to get as close to 100 percent spam filtering as possible. With many researchers and scientists working from narrowband connections in developing countries, even a handful of spam messages could choke their limited bandwidth, waste precious time and resources, and inhibit critical communication. For them, having virtually spam-free email was not a luxury but a significant business necessity.

"Timely information is vital for scientists," explains Enrica Porcari, CIO of the CGIAR. "If you were to ask anyone in the CGIAR what the one thing is they would take with them in the event of an evacuation, which occurs in the places we work, they would point to email. They might leave their suitcases but they'd take their email. In fact, when the staff in Bouake, Ivory Coast, returned after being evacuated when the region became engulfed in war, the first thing they demanded was email. It's their lifeline."

The Solution

CGNET went to work immediately. As an organization dedicated to providing nonprofits with comprehensive and reliable communications anywhere in the world, such challenges are not new to CGNET. The company has interconnected international organizations at more than 300 locations in more than 100 different countries, including some of the most difficult-to-network locations on Earth.

For years, CGNETa Symantec partnerhas successfully used Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam to filter out customers' spam. With typical capture rates at 95 percent and near-perfect accuracy rates, Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam was impressive. Could its rates go even higher, CGNET wondered, if it was used in combination with another different but complementary technology?

Yes, they discovered. CGNET tested Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam with the TurnTide AntiSpam Router, now a Symantec product since Symantec's acquisition of TurnTide. Each product tackles spam using different methodologies and technologies.

Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam uses several multilayered filtering technologies; some of the filters examine the source of the email, while others sift through the message content, leveraging both real-time spam data as well as proactive techniques such as heuristic filtering.

The Symantec TurnTide AntiSpam Router examines the routing information of each email message. If the sender appears to be from a spammer's domain, then it slows its communication with that sender while also stopping any communication with devices from that domain.

With these complementary technologies working together, the volume of incoming spam is greatly reduced, and spam that does try to get through is filtered more efficiently. As an added benefit, CGNET servers enjoy reduced loads, obviating the need to upgrade hardware.

Most importantly, customers find that 99 percent of all spam is filtered out.

Porcari adds that if the volume of spam-related complaints is another measure of the effectiveness of this solution, then the solution has clearly proven itself at the CGIAR. "I used to receive complaints about spam, but not anymore. And I can see by the numbers that this solution is catching a lot of spambetween 150,000 and 200,000 per weekso I know that spammers are trying to get through. They just don't have the pleasure of reaching us."

Today, Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam and Symantec TurnTide AntiSpam technologies are available in new email security appliances from Symantec. CGNET continues to offer the combined technologies in a hosted solution.