Cisco Talos Email Reputation 'Poor' or 'Neutral': What It Means and How to Fix It

Cisco Talos scores sending IPs as Good, Neutral or Poor. Companies whose mail passes through Cisco's email security gateways use that score to decide whether to accept, filter or block your mail. A Poor score means Talos has seen spam or malicious activity from the IP. Fix the cause, and Talos says the score should recover by itself within 3-5 days. If it does not, open a ticket.

What Talos is, and who uses it

Talos is Cisco's threat intelligence group. Among other things, it keeps a reputation score for sending IPs and domains, which you can look up in the Talos Reputation Center. Cisco's email security products (the gateway formerly known as IronPort, and Cisco's cloud email security) use Talos data when deciding how to treat inbound mail.

Talos is explicit that it does not block mail itself. Its sender IP reputation documentation (read 2 November 2026) says that Talos does not block email or internet traffic, and that if mail is blocked you should check with your ISP. What blocks you is the recipient's gateway, acting on the score.

For cold email, that means a Poor Talos score mostly hurts you at larger companies, universities and public bodies that run Cisco filtering. Gmail and Microsoft have their own systems.

The three levels

From the Talos documentation:

Level	Talos definition	What it means for delivery
Good	"Little or no threat activity has been observed from this IP address or domain"	Mail is not likely to be filtered or blocked on reputation
Neutral	"This IP address or domain is within acceptable parameters"	Mail may still be filtered. Can mean slight problems, or too little mail flow to score
Poor	"A problematic level of threat activity has been observed from this IP address or domain"	Mail is likely to be filtered or blocked

Under the labels, Talos uses a score from -10 (worst) to +10 (best).

Neutral is normal for new or low-volume IPs. Talos needs to see mail before it can call an IP good. A fresh dedicated IP for cold email will often show Neutral for a while. That is not a problem in itself.

Why cold-email IPs end up Poor

Talos lists three common causes:

1. Spam reports involving your IP. Talos points you to the DNS-based blocklist section of the lookup to see if the IP is on common lists.
2. DNS patterns that suggest a spambot. Talos tells senders to configure DNS according to RFC 5321 section 4.1.1.1, which covers the hostname a server announces in HELO/EHLO. A generic hosting hostname, a missing PTR record or a HELO that does not match is a typical spambot pattern.
3. Links to malware domains in your mail.

For cold senders the first two dominate, and both have list and setup causes:

• Complaints from people who did not expect your mail, especially in high volume.
• A listing on Spamhaus or another public blocklist, which Talos shows alongside its own score.
• No reverse DNS, or a default one like vps-203-0-113-25.hosting.example.
• Bursts of invalid recipients. A batch of dead addresses looks like directory harvesting to many filters.
• A shared IP whose other users are spamming.

How to fix a Poor score

1. Look up the IP and the domain

Search both your sending IP and your sending domain in the Talos Reputation Center. Note the reputation level, the email volume history and any blocklists shown. If you send through an ESP or a cold-email SMTP provider, make sure you are looking up the IP that actually connects to recipients. The Received: headers on a test message show it.

2. Clear public blocklists first

Run the IP through the blacklist check. If it is listed on Spamhaus, Barracuda or similar, fix that at the same time, because those listings feed the spam-report signal. Our guide on how to get off a blacklist covers each major list.

3. Fix your DNS identity

• PTR record. The IP should have a reverse DNS name that resolves back to the same IP. Check with the reverse DNS lookup. See our PTR record guide.
• HELO/EHLO. Your server should announce a fully qualified hostname that matches the PTR, not localhost or the bare IP.
• SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Not Talos's stated criteria, but every gateway checks them. Use the SPF checker, DKIM checker and DMARC checker.

4. Stop sending what caused it

• Verify the list. Remove invalid addresses before the next send. Upload on the verify page.
• Cut volume from the affected IP, especially to Cisco-filtered domains.
• Remove anyone who complained or unsubscribed, everywhere, not just in one campaign. See cold email suppression lists.
• Check for compromise. If the IP sent mail you did not write, find the leaking account or script first.

5. Wait 3-5 days

Talos says that if you have resolved the problem, "your score should improve automatically within 3-5 days." Keep sending a modest, clean volume during that time. A steady flow of normal mail is what the score recovers from.

6. Open a ticket if it does not move

If the score is still Poor after that, submit a reputation ticket through Talos support. Talos says initial responses are expected within 24 hours, though resolution time varies. Say what the mail is, what caused the problem, and what you changed. On a shared IP, your provider should file the ticket.

How Talos fits with other reputation systems

System	Who uses it	What it scores	Where to check
Cisco Talos	Cisco email gateways and other filters	IP and domain	Talos Reputation Center
Proofpoint Dynamic Reputation	Proofpoint gateways	IP	Proofpoint IP lookup. See Proofpoint blocking your emails
Mimecast IP reputation	Mimecast gateways	IP	Shown in Mimecast bounces. See Mimecast rejections explained
Gmail	Gmail and Google Workspace recipients	Domain and IP	Google Postmaster Tools. See reading Postmaster Tools
Microsoft	Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 recipients	IP, domain and more	SNDS, bounce codes. See 451 4.7.650
Validity Sender Score	Some receivers and filters	IP	Sender Score lookup. See Sender Score explained

A Good score at one says little about the others, and none of them shows you the whole picture. Since the causes overlap, the fixes do too: clean lists, steady volume, proper DNS and authentication.

A quick prevention routine

1. Verify every new list before the first send, and re-verify anything older than a month or so.
2. Ramp new IPs gradually. See our email warmup schedule.
3. Set a proper PTR and HELO the day you get an IP, not after the first block.
4. Look up your IPs on Talos and the major blocklists weekly. The blacklist check is free.
5. Read your bounces. Bounce Doctor separates bad addresses from blocks, so you notice a reputation problem before your sending tool pauses the campaign.

Where SimpleVerifier fits

SimpleVerifier removes the invalid addresses that make an IP look like a harvester, and flags disposable and role addresses that draw complaints. It cannot change a Talos score, and no verifier can. The score follows how your IP behaves over time.

The first 100 checks are free with a Google sign-in on the verify page. Monthly plans are on the pricing page.