What is Talos reputation and how to use it?

If you send a lot of B2B email, there's a good chance your messages pass through Cisco Talos at some point. Cisco's security products power a huge share of enterprise email gateways, and Talos is the threat intelligence engine behind all of them. A poor Talos reputation score can quietly kill delivery to corporate inboxes without a single bounce to show for it.

Here's what the three ratings actually mean. Good means Talos recognizes your IP or domain as a legitimate sender with a clean track record. Neutral means there's limited data, often because you're new or your volume is low. It's not a red flag on its own, but it won't open doors either. Poor means Talos has associated your IP or domain with spam or malicious activity. That's the one that hurts delivery.

To look yours up, go to talosintelligence.com and type your sending IP address or domain into the search bar. You'll land on a reputation page that shows your current rating, your daily email volume, and a breakdown of where that volume is coming from geographically. For B2B senders, you want to check both your sending IP and your sending domain, since Cisco's filters can act on either.

When you're reading the results, a few things are worth paying attention to beyond the rating label itself. A sudden spike in daily volume is a signal Talos weighs heavily. If your volume jumped recently and your score slipped from Good to Neutral, that's likely why. Geographic distribution also matters. High concentrations of traffic from regions known for spam infrastructure can drag your score even if your list is clean.

If your score is Poor, Talos has a dispute form on the same site. You can submit a remediation request, but don't expect an instant fix. The form asks you to confirm your sending practices and provide context. Real improvement usually requires cleaning up whatever caused the poor rating in the first place, whether that's a compromised sending IP, high complaint rates, or spam trap hits. The Talos score will update over time as your behavior changes. That process can take weeks, not hours.

A Neutral score with very low volume isn't urgent, but it's worth monitoring if you're ramping up sending. Talos won't promote you to Good overnight. Gradual, consistent sending with solid authentication in place and low complaint rates will build the history it needs to rate you positively.

Talos is one signal among many, but it's a particularly important one for B2B. If your emails are reaching Microsoft 365 inboxes but bouncing off enterprise gateways, checking Talos is one of the first things worth doing. You can also run a broader reputation check with our free Blocklist Checker to see how you look across multiple systems at once.