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12 Pennsylvania School Districts to Install Abaca’s Email Protection Gateway
Deployments Will Cover Four Northeast Counties
SAN JOSE, CALIF., JUNE 3, 2008– Abaca® Technology Corporation, an innovator in email protection and messaging security, today announced that BLaST Intermediate Unit (IU) 17, Pennsylvania’s largest Intermediate Unit, plans to install the Abaca Email Protection Gateway™ appliance and Abaca ReceiverNet™ Service in 12 school districts within its organization.
Public Email Addresses Hammered by Spam
BLaST IU 17 is an education service agency whose mission is to deliver effective, efficient and economical services to the 19 school districts and 36,000 students in its Intermediate Unit, which includes Bradford, Lycoming, Sullivan and Tioga counties in Pennsylvania.
Since BLaST IU 17 is a large education service agency with a public mission, the email addresses of many of its departments and employees are public as well. So in the course of reaching out to students, parents, teachers, and administrators, BLaST IU 17 became an easy target for spammers.
Over a five-year period, BLaST IU 17 tried several popular email filters. As time progressed, they had only marginal success in blocking spam. Some filters didn’t work well at all; others worked initially but then gradually lost their effectiveness. Meanwhile, the spam kept coming. Some email users were receiving hundreds of spam messages every day, one mailbox often received upwards of 500 spam messages a day!
“Educational institutions are popular targets for spam because they typically have sizeable networks and plenty of publicly available email addresses,” observed Leo Jolicoeur, chief executive officer of Abaca Technology Corporation. “But educational institutions also have limited budgets and lots of demand for network bandwidth. They’re not well equipped to deal with a flood of spam pouring in every day.”
Abaca’s Delivers Guaranteed Results
Hoping to find a more effective solution to BLaST IU 17’s spam problem, Jon Paulhamus, assistant director of technology at BLaST IU 17, did a Google search that led him to the Abaca Email Protection Gateway. Two things jumped out at him right away: Abaca’s quarantine feature for individual users and the company’s guaranteed 99 percent accuracy in blocking spam.
Paulhamus installed and configured the Abaca Email Protection Gateway appliance; entire process took just 10 minutes. The results of Abaca’s spam-filtering accuracy were apparent that same day. “Our spam problem went away immediately,” recalled Jon Paulhamus. “Within 48 hours email users stared coming up and thanking me for eliminating all the spam from their mailboxes.
“Abaca’s Email Protection Gateway works incredibly well,” said Paulhamus. “The administrator dashboard showed that we were getting 6,000 to 15,000 spam messages an hour—in one district alone. And all of that spam is now effectively blocked by Abaca.”
As a busy assistant director with a large information technology organization to manage, Paulhamus also appreciates the reliability and self-sufficiency of the Abaca Email Protection Gateway.
”The appliances pretty much take care of themselves – and that is good, because the less time I have to spend maintaining a product, the more effective it actually is!” And unlike other anti-spam solutions his organization tried earlier, Paulhamus noted that Abaca’s Email Protection Gateway stands up over time. “Instead of losing its effectiveness after a while, it actually gets better and becomes more accurate the longer we use it. There’s no way we would take it out now!”
About BLaST Intermediate Unit (IU) 17
BLaST IU 17 is an education service agency that serves the Bradford, Lycoming, Sullivan and Tioga counties of Pennsylvania. Encompassing 4,000 square miles, 19 school districts and 36,000 students, the mission of BLaST IU 17 is to provide school services that are effective, efficient and economical, and to continually expand its educational and business management services to meet the changing needs of its schools. For more information, please visit www.iu17.org.
About Abaca Technology Corporation
Abaca Technology Corporation is an innovator in email protection and messaging security. Abaca's patent-pending technology, ReceiverNet™, offers an advanced approach in the fight against spam - providing unprecedented levels of accuracy and guaranteeing 99 percent spam filtration. Abaca has created a portfolio of innovative products and services based upon this core technology, thereby assuring users unparalleled messaging protection from spam, as well as viruses and phishing attacks. Abaca is a privately held company headquartered in San Jose, California. For more information about Abaca, please visit www.abaca.com.
Abaca® Email Protection Gateway™, Abaca® Email Protection Gateway™, ReceiverNet™ are trademarks of Abaca Technology Corporation and may be registered in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.
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Media Contact:
Donna Candelori
Candelori Communications Inc.
408-774-3414
dcandelori@candelori.com
