What is Talos Intelligence?

If your emails are landing in spam at enterprise companies but sailing through to Gmail and Outlook just fine, Talos Intelligence might be the reason. It's Cisco's threat intelligence organization, and its reputation data powers Cisco's email security products, which are extremely common in large enterprises and B2B environments.

Talos assigns sender reputation scores to IP addresses and domains based on sending patterns, spam reports, connections to malware, and broader network behavior. The scoring isn't binary like a traditional blocklist. Instead, it uses three tiers: Good, Neutral, and Poor. A Poor score triggers blocking or heavy filtering in any environment running Cisco email security. Neutral puts you in a gray zone where your emails may get through but with extra scrutiny.

Because Cisco's tools are so widespread in corporate IT, your Talos reputation matters a lot if your audience includes business buyers, procurement teams, or anyone with an IT department setting email policy. B2B senders ignoring Talos are often the ones puzzled by enterprise bounce rates they can't explain through Spamhaus or other standard checks.

You can look up your current reputation directly at the Talos Intelligence reputation center. If you're showing as Poor or Neutral, the path forward is the same as with any reputation system: clean sending practices, low complaint rates, and time.

You can check your domain and IP against our free blocklist checker as a starting point. If your Talos score is actively hurting enterprise delivery, our SOS hotline is free and we'll help you figure out the next step.