Monterey Bay Internet

Monterey Bay Internet Keeps Subscribers Happy by Blocking Spam and Viruses with Proofpoint™

SUBSCRIBERS GETTING "INUNDATED" Monterey Bay Internet (MBAY), a California-based Internet Service Provider (ISP) with more than 10,000 subscribers, found that after eight years in business, its "@mbay.net" domain had become a popular target for spammers and viruses. As a result, MBAY customers were being increasingly buried by spam, and increasingly targeted by other email-borne threats including new, rapidly proliferating viruses and worms. In addition to spam's negative impact on MBAY subscribers' email experience, the growing quantity of spam was eating up enormous bandwidth, valuable storage space and threatening to overwhelm MBAY's servers.

Matt Hudson, owner and founder of MBAY, implemented a spam filter in order to protect his subscribers and keep them happy and loyal. "Unfortunately, our original choice of spam filters was not nearly as effective as it needed to be," says Hudson. "And worse, it crashed on several occasions. Our customers continued to be inundated by as many as a million spam emails each night. We needed to take a new course of action."

Finding the right partner to protect inboxes and MBAY's business
Hudson immediately began to evaluate the offerings available on the market. After examining and even implementing several of them, he grew frustrated with low spam detection accuracy rates, high false positives and poor customer service. He decided to build a homegrown application to defeat spam.

After a few months of using the homegrown solution, it became clear it would not be able to keep pace with the rapidly growing problem of spam and viruses. Hudson again decided that he needed a commercial solution, better than any that he had been able to find in the past. That's when he discovered the Proofpoint Protection Server®.

"I was initially attracted to Proofpoint because it had a better interface than I had seen, and offered more control over what was filtered," said Hudson. "Customers are my number one asset, and the increased control that Proofpoint gave me, combined with near-perfect effectiveness was very important to me."

IMMEDIATE, IMPENETRABLE PROTECTION
Monterey Bay Internet was able to deploy the Proofpoint Protection Server in about an hour. The impact was immediate and immense.

"After implementing the Proofpoint Protection Server on January 23, 2004, spam and virus emails disappeared literally overnight! My own inbox was 90 emails lighter the next morning," reports Hudson. "Even more astonishing was our good luck with timing. On January 26th, the MyDoom virus took down networks and servers around the world. Thanks to Proofpoint, MBAY subscribers were completely unaffected. The Proofpoint Protection Server deflected hundreds of thousands of email-borne viruses with perfect effectiveness. While other ISPs were overwhelmed by customer complaints, my customers didn't even know there was an attack underway.

Feedback from customers was also immediate and powerful. "The goodwill among my subscribers as a result of our Proofpoint deployment is the best thing I can ask for," said Hudson. "One of my customers reports that email is now fun again," he added.

Proofpoint was doing such a good job of blocking a high volume of spam and viruses, that some subscribers were even initially concerned that they weren't getting all their email, due to the radical decrease in email volume. Hudson conducted a thorough search and found that after millions of emails, virtually none were missing. "The Proofpoint Protection Server worked so well that it seemed almost weird at first," said Hudson, "But false positives are a non-issue; they simply don't happen."

Regarding the use of a single platform to manage both spam and viruses, Hudson said, "The best thing is that I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to manage separate platforms and it just works. My customers are happy, and that makes me happy, because customer satisfaction and retention is the number one priority in our business."

Hudson reports that the Proofpoint Protection Server is now blocking 11,000,000 spams monthly.

"As the owner of an ISP I am constantly asked by companies what they can do about spam. I tell them that the problem can be eliminated in a day," Hudson continued. "Proofpoint can even make me money because my customers are gladly willing to pay for this reliable spam and virus filtering service, knowing that it saves them time and headaches."

"Before Proofpoint, the spam problem had gotten so bad, that one of my new customers was paying one of his employees overtime to read through his emails. Proofpoint eliminated this cost as well as the stress it placed on the employee. The more customers I talk to, the larger the benefits of eradicating spam seem to grow."

About MBAY
Monterey Bay Internet (MBAY) is a California- based Internet Service Provider (ISP) with more than 10,000 subscribers.