Virus Bulletin spam report good news for some

Security publication Virus Bulletin has issued the results of its latest round of spam blocking tests.

The September edition of the test pitted some twelve different spam-blocking suites against a series of spam messages collected in the wild. The products are tested not only for the ability to block spam messages, but also prevent "false positive" results that block legitimate emails.

Of the twelve vendors tested, nine passed, with only the ClamAV, SPAMfighter Mail Gateway and modusGate products failing.

Top honours in the test went to the McAfee Email and Web Security appliance, which was awarded a platinum-level certification.

Of the nine vendors who passed the test, five earned the gold-level certification. Those products were BitDefender Security for Mail Servers, MessageStream SaaS, M+Guardian, Kaspersky Anti-Spam and McAfee Email Gateway.

Additionally, Webroot E-mail Security SaaS, FortiMail and Microsoft Forefront all garnered silver certifications.

The results were for several vendors an improvement from the last Virus Bulletin spam tests, issued in July. In those tests, two products were awarded platinum certifications, but only one was able to claim a gold certification.

"The benchmarks used for this test were stricter than previous tests, making the achievement of these products all the more impressive," said anti-spam test director Martijn Grooten.