Emeryville, Calif. – February 21, 2007 – Sendmail, the leading provider of policy-centric solutions for securing and authenticating business communications, today announced a key milestone towards technology standardization of email authentication was made by Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Eric Allman. Working on behalf of a cross-industry group, Allman submitted the draft specification for Domain Keys Authenticated Mail (DKIM) for review by the Internet Engineering Task Force. After years of development, refinement and evaluation, the specification for DKIM – for verifying both the domain of each email sender and the integrity of the message - is ready for review and could be accepted as a proposed standard in a matter of weeks.

Allman, who co-authored the specification, was instrumental in bringing Yahoo! and Cisco initially together to develop DKIM, and he has helped guide it through the review and refinement process. As the leader in trusted messaging, Sendmail features integrated DKIM support within its mail processing platform providing 360 degree management and security of all business communications. In addition, Sendmail is the only company to support all of the leading authentication mechanisms (DKIM, DK, SPF, SIDF) in their Sentrion MG (mail gateway) hard or soft appliance.

“Submitting the DKIM draft is a critical step in its adoption as an Internet standard, providing an important resource that enterprises can deploy to effectively neutralize cyber-crime,” said Allman, the author of sendmail, the world’s first Internet mail program. “DKIM has the potential to bring trust and a greater sense of order to the Internet, reduce the unwanted clutter that burdens both individuals and networks, and eliminate opportunities for spammers and phishers to use fraudulent messages to attack individuals and steal their personal information.”

Studies show that more than 80 percent of a company’s incoming messages are unwanted and pose a threat, and that number is expected to increase. DKIM provides the means to virtually eliminate fraudulent email by providing sender authentication, verification and traceability to determine if a message is legitimate or forged. DKIM adds a unique, cryptographic signature to each outbound email. The receiving mail server can then validate the signature through the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). Email with signatures that can’t be validated are automatically rejected. Important questions addressed by this Webinar will include:

• What is sender authentication?
• What are the available sender authentication methods?
• Why should email senders and recipients care about it?