MessageLevel.com provides products that allow organizations and individuals to positively identify received E-mails as having actually been sent by the purported originators, thereby reducing spam and phishing attacks. Among the products available now are a client-level Message Control Center; and an Enterprise level offering that integrates with the Ipswitch IMail server product line, allowing for E-mail verification at the organization level. Other intended products described by the vendor include an E-mail Relay appliance (sender side verification), an E-mail Gateway appliance (receiver side verification) and a client plug-in that will allow individuals to verify E-mails sent to them.

The basic premise of the Message Level Protocol is that received E-mails are verified to ensure that they were actually sent from the purported originator of the message itself. In brief, the sent E-mail is identified on the sender's system in such a way that the recipient system can verify it--via a direct query back to the sender's system--as having actually originated from there. Such verification can be performed using multiple possible algorithms; including the generation of a unique identification key based on data within the actual E-mail (the recipient can then generate the key on its own side, then query the sender with both the actual data components and the actual key itself to determine if the key matches the original key generated by the sender), and a "keyless" algorithm in which only specific components of the E-mails are returned to the sender for verification (and the sender then verifies the message based on its own algorithmic application of the message components).

Software or appliances are required on both ends of the transmission for the verification to be conclusive: the sender must have a component that can both assign unique ids to the messages as well as receive and process verification queries from recipients; and the receiver must have a component capable of querying the sender and making decisions based on the verification received.

Products offered, or intended to be offered by the vendor implementing the Message Level Protocol include the Message Level Control Center, a client-level software application providing both send and receive authentication for individuals; a client-level plug-in enabling the verification of received E-mails (but not the return authentication of E-mails sent to others); a Relay level appliance that provides verification for E-mails sent from an organization; a Gateway appliance that provides authentication for E-mails received at the organization; and Enterprise Edition software that integrates with existing mail servers and provides both send and receive authentication for the orgnization. With this latter product, the vendor has announced the availabilty of Message Level Enterprise for Ipswitch IMail servers, and notes that implementations for other platforms such as Exchange and Sendmail would be announced soon.

Contact MessageLevel.com for current pricing and availability.