Corporate Backgrounder
Introduction
Isolated targeted threats
With the ubiquitous use of e-mail in today's digital economy comes one of the largest security threats to enterprises — targeted e-mail threats. Virus writers use targeted e-mail threats to steal data from single industries or companies, and are
usually motivated by money or connections to organized crime. Despite the past success of antivirus technologies, current
solutions are not capable of completely stopping more these highly focused and more modern threats. E-mail attacks, in
general, have impacted more than 80 percent of companies in North America and a similarly alarming number of businesses
worldwide.
Company Overview
Avinti is the first company to prevent isolated targeted e-mail attacks by delivering an e-mail attack prevention layer. Avinti's
iSolation Server® is the first e-mail security solution using virtual machine technology to test messages that are potentially
threat-bearing prior to actual delivery to the end user. The solution eliminates all known and unknown e-mail-based viruses
from corporate e-mail systems, enabling organizations and individuals to safely use this critical communication tool for the first
time without fear of malicious, costly attacks.
Founded in 2002, Avinti is a private, venture capital-funded company in Lindon, Utah led by a management team with extensive
IT and security industry experience. With iSolation Server's technology, Avinti is poised to become the first company to finally
make e-mail safe and secure.
iSolation Server
iSolation Server eliminates outbreak viruses through the use of virtual machines
Avinti enables businesses to have full control over an e-mail system — including allowing the use of including attachments and
active content — without resorting to shutting down the system or removing all incoming attachments to prevent malicious
attacks. The iSolation Server prevents e-mail containing new and unknown outbreak viruses from spreading to unsuspecting
users, working with any SMTP-based e-mail server to:
- Intercept e-mail at the network edge
- Execute and monitor the e-mail in a secure, virtual environment, and
- Quarantines any e-mail exhibiting malicious behavior before delivery to the target user.
The key difference between the Avinti solution and existing, signature-based antivirus offerings is the use of virtual machines to
test and examine the actual observed behavior of e-mail messages. The Avinti iSolation Server with virtual machine technology:
- Executes e-mail and attachments in a virtual environment at the network edge, before reaching the target user
- Observes the attempted behavior of suspect e-mail to determine its intent
- Quarantines e-mail demonstrating suspicious or malicious behavior
- Enables quarantined e-mails to be analyzed and cleaned by an administrator for future delivery
Company History
Searching for targeted viruses
Although traditional pattern-matching antivirus techniques have been effective at containing known viruses, for Avinti
technology founders Dave Green and Wally Marsden, there had to be something for viruses nobody had seen. After realizing
a virtual machine could execute and observe the actual behavior of suspect e-mail in a secure environment, the two founded
a company in 2001 to commercialize this technology. With vSpring Capital providing initial investment in the company, Avinti,
Inc was founded in August 2002 and was able to successfully test beta versions of iSolation Server in several sites throughout
the nation and detect in-the-wild viruses that eluded firewall and real-time scanning systems. Avinti began shipping the latest
version of its e-mail management solution— iSolation Server v2.0 — in June 2005.
iSolation Server provides organizations the ability to receive and use e-mail attachments without the fear of targeted e-mail
attacks. Companies commonly restrict or prohibit employees from using e-mail attachments in order to minimize the risk of
future virus outbreak threats. With iSolation Server, system administrators can allow e-mail attachments into the network and
still have the assurance those attachments are being monitored and examined for potential malicious threats.
Management Team
Biographies of Avinti's Executive Team 
Contact Avinti
Contact Avinti
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