Red Condor Bests Barracuda and Postini in Tolly Group Anti-Spam Test

Report Finds Red Condor's Appliance Achieved a Higher Spam Block Rate Than Barracuda and Postini, and Delivered Performance On Par With IronPort at a Fraction of the Price


ROHNERT PARK, CA--(Marketwire - April 28, 2009) - Red Condor, a leading provider of fully managed email security solutions, today announced the results of a third-party anti-spam effectiveness and feature comparison test that evaluated Red Condor, Barracuda Networks' Spam Firewall 300, Google Inc.'s Message Security powered by Postini and Cisco System Inc.'s IronPort C150 Email Security Appliance (referred to hereafter as Barracuda, Postini and IronPort, respectively). The test, conducted by The Tolly Group, found that Red Condor's Message Assurance Gateway 2700 (MAG2700) network appliance achieved a higher percentage of spam detection than Barracuda and Postini's offerings and delivered an on par performance with the IronPort device. While finishing on par with IronPort, Red Condor's smallest model MAG costs $4.80 per mailbox for a 500-user scenario versus IronPort's $23.50 per mailbox.

During the week-long test, the MAG2700 generated one false positive in more than 190,700 inbound messages, compared with one in every 6,720 emails for the Barracuda's Spam Firewall 300 and one in every 527 emails for Postini's hosted service. Of the 762,962 emails processed using Red Condor's MAG appliance, 72 spam messages were misclassified as legitimate messages for a spam block percentage of 99.991 percent. Barracuda missed 101 spam messages out of 262,088 total emails for a spam detection rate of 99.961 percent, while Postini classified 507 spam messages out of 13,187 total emails as legitimate for a spam detection rate of 95.397 percent. IronPort misclassified 102 spam messages out of 1,564,526 total emails for a spam detection rate of 99.993 percent.

"The results of The Tolly Group's test validate what our customers and channel partners continually tell us: in terms of performance and value, we outrank the competition," said Dr. Thomas Steding, president and chief executive officer of Red Condor. "When we entered this test, we wanted to be evaluated against the solutions that we frequently compete with, and we did not want to shy away from the biggest names in the industry. When you factor in our zero filter tuning and administration, as well as our hybrid architecture, the reviewers agreed that our appliances deliver a great value proposition. Red Condor combines powerful anti-spam detection and a fault-tolerant appliance at a significantly lower cost per mailbox."

"With any of our tests, it is important that we put the solutions through practical use to show how they would perform under real-world conditions," stated Kevin Tolly from The Tolly Group. "As we evaluated the four anti-spam solutions, it was clear to us which solutions were outperforming the others, particularly in the areas of overall spam filtering, and false negatives and positives. Of course, cost is a major factor in today's economic climate, so companies are looking to get performance for a great price. Red Condor combines low cost and control of an onsite appliance with the proactive monitoring and reliability of a hosted service."

According to the test report, "Tolly engineers tested all platforms with a live E-mail stream of messages in order to test the capabilities and behavior of each product when they were deployed in a live network."

Testing was conducted in accordance with the Tolly Common RFP #1058 "Anti-Spam Gateway v1.0." See CommonRFP.com for more details. All the appliances were configured behind the corporate firewall and quarantine features were enabled. The LDAP query feature in each solution was used to run recipient verification on The Tolly Group's Active Directory server and each system was reset to factory settings prior to testing. All inbound email messages during a seven-day period were scanned for possible spam. Testing was conducted in succession beginning with Postini, followed by Barracuda, IronPort and then Red Condor.

To download the complete report, visit http://www.redcondor.com/resources/downloads/tolly-report.pdf.

About Red Condor

Red Condor is revolutionizing spam fighting with its next generation technology. Red Condor's highly accurate email filter, hybrid architecture Vx Technology™, and fully managed appliances lead to a dramatic reduction in the cost of owning a premium spam filter. With solutions for small business, as well as ISPs with millions of email inboxes, Red Condor has a cost-effective, time-saving solution that is rapidly gaining market share. The system's design has built-in zero tolerance for lost email, and a near zero false-positive rate while achieving long-term spam block rates greater than 99%. This next-generation technology is backed by a 24x7 customer care center staffed by email security experts at Red Condor's headquarters. For more information, visit www.redcondor.com.

About The Tolly Group

The Tolly Group, an independent testing and strategic consulting organization based in Boca Raton, FL, offers a full range of services designed to furnish both the vendor and end-user communities with authoritative and unbiased information. Additionally, The Tolly Group is recognized worldwide for its expertise in assessing leading-edge technologies. For more information on The Tolly Group's services, visit its Web site at: Tolly.com, E-mail info@tolly.com, call +1 (561) 391-5610, or fax +1 (561) 391-5810.

Contact Information: Contact: Kevin Wilson 513-898-1008