AVAST Taps into Mailshell's Anti-Spam and Anti-Phishing Intelligence

AVAST Software has partnered with traffic reputation and email filtering vendor Mailshell, to integrate its anti-spam and anti-phishing engines into avast! Internet Security.Mailshell is an OEM provider of email filtering technology, who's list of partners includes security vendors like McAfee, ESET, AVG, Norman, CA, Check Point or webroot.

The company offers its technologies in the form of low-footprint cross-platform software development kits (SDKs), which are easy to integrate into a variety of products.

Amongst the solutions that make use of Mailshell's SDKs are software appliances, SaaS platforms, gateway security software, desktop security suites, mobile devices, WiFi access points, network firewalls, as well as other embedded devices.

As part of the new deal, AVAST has integrated the Mailshell Anti-Spam engine and the Mailshell LiveFeed, a real-time traffic reputation service, into the latest version of its Internet Security suite offering.

The Mailshell LiveFeed uses advanced statistical reputation algorithms, which makes it more efficient and flexible than blacklist-based solutions.

"Mailshell’s technology provides a great balance of low memory usage, high throughput and consistent accuracy," said Vincent Steckler, CEO of AVAST Software.

"This partnership provides our users with best-of-breed protection while allowing our development team to focus on the other core technologies that make avast! unique," he stressed.

AVAST is one of the largest providers of anti-malware solutions. According to the company, its avast! Free Antivirus product has over 130 million registered users.

"avast! is now among the most popular and widely used security products in the world. We’re thrilled to help the AVAST team provide even more value to its massive global user base," said Tonny Yu, CEO of Mailshell.

In the latest on-demand comparative test [pdf] from AV-Comparatives, AVAST chose to participate with its free product and it scored amongst the top solutions for malware detection, false positive rate (few) and scanning performance.

The avast! Internet Security product has all the capabilities of avast! Free Antivirus, but adds a firewall and an anti-spam component.