MessageLabs Announces Small Business Security Solutions

WebKnowHow
Wednesday, November 29, 2006; 03:40 AM

MessageLabs, a leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services to businesses worldwide, today announced the launch of MessageLabs Small Business Solutions. Designed to specifically meet the needs of small and mid-sized businesses, the solutions address many of the key security challenges facing smaller businesses today: the increasing sophistication and volume of threats, limited IT resources and budget, and lack of depth of security expertise.

Providing fully integrated, world class protection from email and web threats at an affordable and predictable cost, MessageLabs Email and Web Security serves as the cornerstone solution for all small business messaging security needs. Incorporating a fully managed, multi-layered scalable solution for anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-spyware and URL filtering, the solution protects small businesses from all messaging and web threats with simple initial setup and minimal management required and without the need for any software or hardware.

“Security is the top issue for any business today, large or small,” notes Gary Chen, SME IT Infrastructure & Applications Analyst at Yankee Group. “Small companies are especially challenged though, lacking the IT expertise and resources to conquer something as complex as IT security, while also facing the same threats as large enterprises. Managed services are really the only way for these businesses to put up a proper defense, given the situation and the desire to focus on their core business and other more strategic IT and business issues.”

The necessity for small business Internet security is confirmed in the latest MessageLabs Intelligence analysis also announced today. Spam continues to be a major threat to all businesses with global spam levels in November reaching 74 percent of all emails, the highest level observed since early 2005. However, business sector analysis reveals that increased attention is given to businesses of under 250 employees who receive almost twice as many spam messages as medium sized companies and 30 percent more spam than large enterprise organizations.

“Security has a direct impact on every critical part of a business including reputation, productivity and business continuity and unfortunately small businesses are not exposed to a proportionately smaller threat – in fact they face a greater volume with fewer resources to tackle it. More and more small businesses are realizing security is better outsourced to experts who can keep the threats far away from a company’s network,” said Jos White, President of MessageLabs. “Our Small Business Solutions incorporate all of the knowledge and experience we have gathered through years of proven threat protection and management of email and web traffic with our understanding of the needs and hurdles faced by companies of this size.”

At the heart of the Small Business Solutions is MessageLabs Skeptic™ technology, which has proven uniquely successful in stopping threats such as viruses, trojans, spam, and phishing attacks. Skeptic also pioneered Converged Threat Analysis™, taking recent threat and reputation information from other communications channels, such as email, and applying that knowledge to web traffic, providing an unparalleled level of knowledge and protection for MessageLabs 15,000 customers, of which over 10,000 are smaller businesses.

Key Benefits of MessageLabs Small Business Solutions

MessageLabs range of managed services for small businesses offer a robust yet affordable way for small and medium-sized business to get the level of messaging and web protection they require.

In addition, the services:

   --  Help free up IT resources to focus on projects aligned more
       with business objectives
   --  Reduce staffing, hardware and software costs with excellent
       return on investment
   --  Improve the overall security of your business
   --  Ensure the business remains protected well into the future
   --  Simplify the procurement by dealing with just one source
   --  Provide certainty of an integrated, complete solution that
       deals with convergent threats

MessageLabs Small Business Security Solutions are available covering three areas of security:

‘Email and Web Security’ - Complete protection against all email and web threats, including viruses, spam, phishing, trojans and spyware and includes web URL filtering for setting and enforcing corporate web usage policies and MessageLabs Skeptic technology for stopping threats other security solutions miss.

An upgrade to ‘Complete Security and Control’ is available which adds inbound and outbound email policy enforcement for content and images to enable you to set and enforce email acceptable usage policies.

‘Email Security’ - Complete protection against all email threats including viruses, spam, phishing, trojans and other forms of malware, and includes MessageLabs Skeptic technology for stopping threats other security solutions miss.

An upgrade to ‘Email Security and Control’ is available which adds inbound and outbound email policy enforcement for content and images to enable you to set and enforce email acceptable usage policies.

‘Web Security’ - Complete protection against all Web-based threats including viruses, spyware, adware, phishing, trojans and other forms of downloadable malware, and includes web URL filtering for setting and enforcing corporate web usage policies and MessageLabs Skeptic technology for stopping threats other security solutions miss.