Replies to post #125 on COMMTOUCH SOFTWR LTD (CTCH)

[midastouch017]

Eli,

This is a sort of guidance, or at least a hint of things
to come.
As you know, companies test the products for quite some
time prior to their decision of cooperation/contracting.

This sentence in the whole paragraph reads to me like :
'We are testing our products in the the Pacific, the
interim results look promising therefore we intend to
launch additional collaborative agreements with partners
in the Asia Pacific '

In short, you are not missing anything concrete.
I simply detect a hint as small as an elephant in regards
to additional contracts coming soon from that part of the
world.

Kapish ?
;-)

Dubi

[midastouch017]

Commtouch, hero of zero-hour
06.12.05 | 19:20 By Shirley Yom Tov
Did you receive an email from the CIA recently? Or from the FBI, perhaps?

No, you didn't. But if you think you did, you were attacked by the Sober worm.

It's been called one of the worst worm attacks of all time. Sober was inside a staggering one of every 13 emails, say data security sources.

Horrors of this sort are bread and butter for data security companies, or some of them at least. One is the Israeli company Commtouch Software (Nasdaq: CTCH), which specializes in software that weeds out spam.

Today Commtouch sent out a flood of emails of its own, describing the superior qualities of its products, while presenting the limitations of rival offerings by the likes of Symantec and McAfee.

A Newsweek article earlier this month mentioned Symantec, home of Norton anti-virus technology, and McAfee. According to AV-Test of Germany, Symantec responded to 12 of the most serious viral attacks in the first half of 2005 within ten hours and 48 minutes, on average. McAfee took an average of 9 hours and 29 minutes.

Commtouch marketing manager Oren Drori says the critical part of the attack is in its first seven hours. That is when the virus is most widely disseminated. Meaning, the solutions Symantec and McAfee offer only kick in after the damage has been done, he says.

Looking for a pattern, not a disease

Commtouch can boast of two mentions in Government Technology. One says that present anti-virus engines require a security product to complement their viral-signature recognition ability. The second explains how Commtouch's technology succeeds where others fail.

Drori says Commtouch has solutions for attacks as they happen ("zero-hour").

"Commtouch does not analyze the virus and seek a solution. It checks mail traffic at any given moment and identifies patterns of viral distribution in real time," he explains. "Our solution can identify a virus within seconds. Each of our customers has a Commtouch component in touch with the company. When a movement is suspect, the email is blocked off and never reaches the addressee's email box."

Commtouch can also present a report from an independent lab, saying it was first to identify the Sober virus, on November 15.

The right to exist

All this is very nice, but for the snag that Commtouch's solution can't work on its own. It is an add-on to anti-virus and firewall technology. Does Commtouch have any right to exist as an independent company in a market of giants such as Symantec?

"We certainly have a right to exist, especially because of the OEM model through which we operate," Drori insists. "We join existing solutions and have 30 partners including medium-sized antivirus companies. There could be a scenario in which we defend email boxes of 30 million participants."

In the present quarter, the fourth of 2005, Commtouch should enter the realm of positive cash flow, Drori says. It believes it will achieve black ink in mid-2006.

Meanwhile, the Sober attack seems to have made Commtouch investors giddy. Its share price has leaped 40% in the last month, boosting its market capitalization to $43 million.

For the third quarter of 2005 Commtouch reported a million dollars in revenues and a net loss of $350,000.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ArticleContent.jhtml?itemNo=654522

Dubi