Brightmail Inc. was a

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

–based technology company focused on

anti-spam Various anti-spam techniques are used to prevent email spam (unsolicited bulk email). No technique is a complete solution to the spam problem, and each has trade-offs between incorrectly rejecting legitimate email ( false positives) as opposed ...

filtering Filtration is a physical process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture. Filter, filtering, filters or filtration may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Fil ...

. Brightmail's system has a three-pronged approach to stopping spam, the Probe Network is a massive number of e-mail addresses established for the sole purpose of receiving spam. The Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center (BLOC) evaluates newly detected spam and issues rules for

ISPs ISPS may refer to: * Isoprene synthase The enzyme isoprene synthase (EC 4.2.3.27) catalysis, catalyzes the chemical reaction : prenyl pyrophosphate \rightleftharpoons isoprene + diphosphate This enzyme belongs to the family of lyases, specifical ...

. The third approach is the Spam Wall, a filtering engine that identifies and screens out spam based on the updates from the BLOC. Brightmail had partnerships with major Email providers and

including

Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California, and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was o ...

Sendmail Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) used for email transport over the Internet. A descendant of t ...

Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...

and Software.com. Other partners include AT&T WorldNet Service,

Concentric Network XO Communications, LLC, previously Nextlink Communications, Concentric Network Corporation and Allegiance Telecom, Inc., was an American telecommunications company. It was purchased and replaced by Verizon Communications. Services XO provided ...

EarthLink EarthLink is an American Internet service provider. Earthlink went public on NASDAQ in January 1997. Much of the company's growth was via acquisition. In 2000, ''The New York Times'' described it as the "second largest Internet service provider ...

, Excite, FastNet, FlashNet,

Juno Online Services Juno Online Services, also called simply Juno, is an Internet service provider based in the United States. It originated as a free email service and later expanded its offerings. Juno is a subsidiary of United Online, which in turn is a subsidi ...

and USA.net.

The antivirus-inspired regular update mechanism used to detect spam email attracted the attention of

Internet security Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules ...

software makers and Brightmail was acquired by

Symantec Symantec may refer to: * Gen Digital, an American consumer software company formerly known as Symantec * Symantec Security, a brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, ...

in 2004. The Brightmail name continued to be used by Symantec, and the slogan ''Powered by Brightmail'' appeared on their products until 2011 when most products were renamed or deprecated into what is known as Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG).

Background

Founded as Bright Light Technologies, Inc. by a group of

AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...

expatriates led by

Sunil Paul Sunil Paul (born November 12, 1964) is an Internet entrepreneur who launched Spring Free EV in 2021. He has previously founded companies such as Brightmail and Freeloader, Inc. He was the co-founder and CEO of Sidecar, a San Francisco, based an o ...

in 1998, with the promise to “end spam,” Bright Light raised $55 million in three rounds of venture capital led by Accel, TCV, and Symantec. After the second round of funding, Bright Light changed its name to Brightmail in summer 1999.
Brightmail's services were mostly geared toward

, whose subscribers were demanding a solution to spam or junk email, as it is estimated that fifty percent of all email is unwanted spam. Brightmail made its name by creating a server-side

spam filtering Spam most often refers to: * Spam (food), a consumer brand product of canned processed pork of the Hormel Foods Corporation * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ...

and customized software update services that employed sophisticated server-based rules that recognize spam and restrict the ability of spammers to relay mail through other people's servers. From a network of partners Brightmail gets an early warning of any widespread spam, which it analyzes in real-time at the Brightmail Logistics and Operations Center.

Symantec acquisition

In mid-2004, Symantec Corp., an early investor that owned 11 percent of Brightmail, acquired the firm for $370 million in an all-cash deal. Symantec was expanding beyond antivirus to provide a variety of security software, services and hardware. To this end, it has made a number of acquisitions between 2002 and 2004, including SafeWeb and

On Technology ON Technology Corporation was a software company in the United States. Formed in 1987 by Mitch Kapor after his departure from Lotus Software, the initial business plan of the company was to build an object-oriented PC desktop environment provid ...

. Brightmail technology was incorporated in most Symantec's products, including the well-known Norton antivirus product line. The move marks Brightmail's shift from point antispam systems to the larger, more integrated email security solutions, including products that solve a wide range of email messaging problems. The CEO at the time of acquisition was

Enrique Salem Enrique Salem (born 1965) was the president and CEO of software company Symantec from 2009 until 2012, and was a member of the U.S. President's Management Advisory Board. Prior to being CEO of Symantec he was the COO of Symantec. Biography Sa ...

, who later went on to become the CEO of Symantec before being ousted in 2012.

Products and services

*Brightmail Anti-Spam: used to identify and filter unsolicited or unwanted electronic messages. *Brightmail Anti-Virus: an anti-virus module, is used to scan message attachments for viruses and other malicious code, and deliver anti-virus signature updates to customers automatically and securely. *Brightmail Reputation Service *Brightmail Anti-Fraud

References

{{Symantec Software companies based in California Gen Digital acquisitions Defunct software companies of the United States