Watchguard Technologies, Inc.

Borderware Technologies Inc.

Rod Gilchrist

Robert Osborne

John Alsop

Richard Melvin Fogel

Bill Simpson

Sensor nodes (or addresses therefore), acting as real-time message decoys, are distributed across a real-time communications network to attract unsolicited real-time messages. Filtering rules are derived from the message characteristics (such as the source address) and messaging content of the traffic encountered at the sensor nodes. The filtering rules are distributed to filtering agents positioned in the communications network in such a way that they can filter traffic for legitimate users. The filtering agents may identify and control the disposition of real-time messaging traffic that is part of a mass communication campaign on behalf of legitimate users of the real-time messaging communication system. Disposition may include suppressing, diverting, or labeling.

Method and apparatus for controlling unsolicited messaging

A Voice over IP (VoIP) or Real Time Messaging (RTM) firewall device is claimed that protects VoIP or RTM network traffic by identifying and controlling the delivery of such network traffic that is unsolicited and undesired by the recipient (i.e. VoIP or RTM spam). The system involves applying a unique marking to RTM messages close to a point of message origination and then at a point close to message termination for the intended recipient examining a reputation store for information on the unique marking and using that information in conjunction with a set of policy rules to decide whether to pass, reject, pass on to an RTM store or otherwise filter the RTM message. The unique marking serves to identify a source characteristic of the message such as the message originator, a corporate affiliation for the originator, or a RTM network characteristic of the originator such as a transmission gateway.

Method and apparatus for controlling unsolicited messaging in real time messaging networks

A method of 'stateful failover' is provided that allows email gateway systems in a cluster to deliver email messages that have been accepted for delivery by a member of the cluster, but has failed with out delivering the messages. The method involves creating a backup copy of the messages that have been accepted for delivery by one email gateway system in the stateful failover cluster on one or more other email gateway systems in the stateful failover cluster. Upon detecting the failure of the email gateway system that accepted the message, another member of the stateful failover cluster that has access to the backup copy of the message queue takes responsibility for the delivery of the messages on the mirrored queue.

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Oakville, Canada

Rod Gilchrist