SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 5, 2004 - Generating a huge buzz during the annual RSA security conference in February 2004, Microsoft stepped into the anti-spam battle with a new Caller ID technology standard. Caller ID helps uncover whether the email message is really coming from whom it says it is. However, the success of this elegant anti-spam tool is heavily dependent on whether mail server vendors and IT administrators will work together to adopt the technology.

"It's like packing junk mail in the formal stationary of a world renowned company. Spammers know that you are more likely to open and read messages from someone you trust, so they try to hijack the identity of such reputable sources to send you spam emails you would otherwise automatically dump," says Martin Viktora, CEO of Kerio Technologies, a developer of secure mail servers for Linux, Windows and Mac OS. Kerio is the first company to offer Microsoft's Caller ID in a commercial mail server.

The Anti-spam industry has seen many ill-fated attempts to devise universal spam-fighting technology but Caller ID has a decent chance to succeed primarily because of three crucial attributes. First, it is fairly simple to implement and does not require any central authority to maintain a classification of spam. Second, it allows for gradual adoption by the industry. Third, it is getting strong promotion from Microsoft and Hotmail.

"Although Microsoft's Caller ID is just one of the proposed email source-checking standards, it may be a powerful weapon in the fight against spam," said Richi Jennings, Research Analyst at Ferris Research, Inc. "Such standards will help protect an organization's reputation by minimizing spam sent fraudulently in its name."

Kerio has implemented Caller ID in Kerio MailServer, its messaging offering for small and medium sized businesses. "Caller ID will be truly successful only if tens of thousands of companies modify their domain name records," explains Mr. Viktora, "but the technology is extremely useful even now - our initial testing detected the first e-mail with a forged sender's address within two minutes. The email containing a virus pretended to be coming from microsoft.com. One hour later, Caller ID had caught over seventy forged e-mails, mostly from microsoft.com but some even using our own domain, kerio.com." To help promote the technology, Kerio has setup a webpage for checking domains for Caller ID information. To try it out, just visit www.kerio.com/callerid and enter a mail domain in the search field.

Caller ID is part of Kerio MailServer 5.7.8, released on April 5, 2004, and complements existing integrated anti-spam technologies such as Directory Harvest Attack protection and SpamEliminator content analysis. It starts at $679 with built-in McAfee Antivirus and is available for download from www.kerio.com.

About Kerio Technologies Inc.
Founded in 2001, Kerio Technologies Inc. (www.kerio.com) is a major provider of Internet security software for small to medium sized networks, specializing in network and desktop firewalls and secure workgroup messaging systems. Kerio's corporate headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California, with offices in Great Britain and the Czech Republic. Kerio's technology partners include Network Associates and Internet Security Systems.