Where most of us see a nuisance, Paul Judge sees a security threat. While working on his master’s thesis on secure content distribution, Judge became employee number four at CipherTrust, an Atlanta data security startup. Judge, now chief technology officer, envisioned a clack box installed at the gateway between the Internet and a corporate or campus network that would block unwanted e-mail and viruses before they slowed productivity or destroyed data. Leading a team of 10 developers (all older than he was), Judge produced IronMail, a computer that runs a series of spam filters and virus detectors, some based on algorithms the team created. Now deployed at 700 corporations and universities, IronMail stops 95 to 98 percent of incoming spam without blocking legitimate mail, Judge says. He also founded the Spam Archive, a research storehouse of junk e-mail, and his efforts let to his appointment as the first head of the Anti-Spam Research Group within the Internet Research Task Force, a professional society. “Over the years, the anti-spam community has focused on symptom relief,” Judge remarks. “The Anti-Spam Research Group was formed to focus on a cure.”