McAfee outlines email security strategy

McAfee has outlined details of its Email security strategy, providing enterprises with the widest range of deployment choices and service options available today. McAfee said that it has broadened its deployment offerings with the recent acquisition of MX Logic and would offer customers a full set of delivery options: appliance or software-as-a-service (SaaS), a combination of both, and the ability to choose a deployment option that best fits their needs.

According to the company, customers may now combine SaaS and integrated hardware/software appliances in any configuration. "Customers have told us they shouldn't be forced to choose between different delivery models for wmail protection," said Marc Olesen, senior vice president and general manager of the SaaS business unit at McAfee. "Our flexible delivery model offers cloud-based services and hardware-based appliances, and provides customers with the ability to mix and match based on their needs. Bottom line, we're uniquely prepared to offer customers email solutions that best meet their current and future business needs, maximise their flexibility and reduce total cost of ownership," he added.

For customers who opt for a SaaS model, McAfee would provide McAfee SaaS Email Protection, including the offerings gained in the MX Logic acquisition, to filter inbound and outbound email traffic in the cloud. McAfee SaaS Email Protection defends against viruses and worms, blocks spam, quarantines suspect messages and filters outbound mail to prevent distribution of proprietary information, the company said. McAfee is also delivering email archiving and email continuity services in the cloud.

Customers can also opt for a hybrid delivery model where they utilise McAfee Email Gateway on-premise to provide outbound protection from data leakage and support regulatory compliance with content filtering, automatic policy enforcement and integrated encryption at the gateway. The company informed that the hybrid solution leverages a multilayered strategy to successfully keep malicious messages out of the network. The solution uses McAfee SaaS Email Protection to filter spam in the cloud and the McAfee Email Gateway appliance on-premise to provide flexible policy creation and additional spam reduction with zero false positives.

McAfee also announced a new version of the McAfee Email Gateway. The McAfee Email Gateway 6.7.2 appliance delivers total email protection for enterprises, integrating comprehensive inbound threat protection with the most extensive on-box email data loss prevention in the industry, the company said. This would reportedly provide enterprise-class features and flexibility to increase messaging security while reducing the costs associated with spam, bandwidth consumption, malware cleanup and data loss.