• by Ray Schultz , December 12, 2018

SendGrid has taken what it says is the unusual step of announcing its inbox protection rate in an effort to increase cyber security and privacy transparency in preparation for the holidays.

The company, which has 2 billion email recipients, says it has a 99.97% email delivery rate.

It remains to be seen whether other service providers release their protection rates in response, or whether some already have. The metric is surely available to clients, but could fuel public comparisons and listings of vendors.

The firm expects cyber attacks to jump by nearly 60% this holiday season. It points to FireEye’s recent Email Threat Report, showing that only 32% of email traffic in the first half of 2018, was “clean,” and delivered to inboxes.  It also showed that one in every 101 emails had malicious intent, according to SendGrid.

SendGrid, soon to be owned by Twilio, seeks to maintain “a clean, phish-free mail flow by investing heavily in our people, process and technology,” states Scott Gerlach, SendGrid’s chief information security officer.

The firm processed 2.8 billion emails on Black Friday and 2.9 billion on Cyber Monday, its two largest sending days, it says. 

SendGrid claims that it protects security through automated machine learning and artificial intelligence. It also employs neural network defenses to prevent phishers from signing up for its service.