In the first of many announcements to come, ThreatSTOP is proud to announce that web security vendor EdgeWave (formerly St.Bernard Software) has embedded our botnet blocklist into their flagship product iPrism.  Specifically, our outbound blocklist against command and control hosts was embedded in iPrism in addition to its existing URL, virus, malware, spyware and phishing blocking features for a more comprehensive security solution.

We are now discussing similar integrations with various vendors in the networking and security markets.  What's interesting is that while they occupy different segments of the space (routers/switches, firewalls, load balancers, WAN optimization etc.), they are all seeing demand from customers for IP reputation-based products to supplement their security offerings to combat the botnet problem.  They all want to have new offerings by Q1 2012; some by mid-2011.

This tells us two important things in the emerging IP reputation market:

1.  The awareness of the botnet problem--that it is a new class of threat that's different and much more dangerous and expensive than the common spamware we are all too familiar with--is growing, especially in the mid-size and up enterprise market.

2.  The current generation of spamware fighting tools--AV, web filters, Spam filters, IDS etc.--is not effective against botnets.  The reasons are well known by people in the botnet-fighting space, and documented by numerous lab tests and research reports, but of course existing spamware vendors have the incentive to produce FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that basically says "oh, we've got botnet filters too bolted on our AV product that works."

We, and others in this emerging field, need to constantly pound the message that 1) we are fighting well-funded, sophisticated criminal gangs rather than a smart teenager getting his jollies hacking, 2) a 70% solution 3 days late (which is what some AV-based "bot filters" are) is not the solution.  Our conversations with partner candidates are encouraging.

Stay tuned for more deals.