Postini overhauls hosted security
Stops bots, encrypts mail, keeps lawyers happy.
By Cara Garretson, Network World | Network World US | Published: 05:53, 04 April 2007
Postini has added investigation management, encryption, and better threat protection to its suite of managed security services.
The new and upgraded services, set to come out this quarter, are designed to help large organisations protect themselves from threats as well as manage and archive email and instant messaging.
Enhancements to Postini's archiving services include a new investigation management feature designed to ease the legal discovery process - and comply with the new US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, for example. These rules, which took effect in December, require businesses to retain and be able to produce electronic records for courts and litigating parties.
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Also new are the Postini Personal Archive and Postini Toolbar, which give an organisation's users access to archived email and instant messages from their desktops without having to get the IT department involved.
New encryption features include the ability to send encrypted mail to consumers who can easily decrypt, view and reply to messages in their in-box, officials said. Postini already offers business-to-business encryption via its Transport Layer Security service.
On the email security front, Postini has added adaptive heuristic algorithms that help protect against spam sent from bot nets. When the service detects multiple spam messages that contain the same content and are therefore likely sent from bot nets, it will place these messages in a "penalty box" for further examination. The service also features improved algorithms for catching image spam, the vendor said.
Manufacturer Johnson Controls has been using Postini's email security service for about two years and expects that the upgraded service will help keep even more spam out of the company's 64,000 inboxes.
"So far, we've been very pleased with the results; we don't get complaints from our users," says Renate Tomesch, global enterprise messaging manager at Johnson controls. "Postini is keeping up with spam."
Postini's Web Security service has been enhanced to alert users when the websites linked to search results point them to inappropriate sites or sites known to download malicious code. It also can detect when portions of a web page conflict with a company's Internet use policy and block access to that portion while still allowing the visitor to view the rest of the page, officials said. Postini licenses ScanSafe's Web filtering technology for this service.
Postini has not yet disclosed pricing for the new and upgraded services.
