Vendors unveil new security lines of defense

Security vendor McAfee last week unveiled a line of appliances and services for combating spam and viruses, while start-up iPolicy Networks introduced a line of intrusion-prevention systems with content filtering.

McAfee's WebShield 3.0 line of appliances scan the corporate Internet gateway for inbound and outbound viruses and spam. The latest models of the WebShield e250, e500 and e1000 appliances, which filter between 35,000 and 70,000 messages per hour, will be able to scan for inappropriate e-mail content based on factors that include keywords, file size and type.

In addition, McAfee's managed services division, which has for several years made available a managed anti-virus scanning service under the ASAP brand, now is adding anti-spam filtering.

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Security vendor McAfee last week unveiled a line of appliances and services for combating spam and viruses, while start-up iPolicy Networks introduced a line of intrusion-prevention systems with content filtering.

McAfee's WebShield 3.0 line of appliances scan the corporate Internet gateway for inbound and outbound viruses and spam. The latest models of the WebShield e250, e500 and e1000 appliances, which filter between 35,000 and 70,000 messages per hour, will be able to scan for inappropriate e-mail content based on factors that include keywords, file size and type.

In addition, McAfee's managed services division, which has for several years made available a managed anti-virus scanning service under the ASAP brand, now is adding anti-spam filtering.

The McAfee anti-spam service, similar to Symantec's Brightmail, works by having subscriber companies redirect mailbox traffic to the McAfee data center to be filtered, according to Lillian Wai, McAfee managed services product marketing manager. The McAfee ASAP service, which costs about $2.50 per user, per month, lets end users and IT administrators set up customized filtering rules, including whitelists and blacklists.

Companies that want to purchase McAfee equipment rather than outsourcing services will find the WebShield 3.0 appliances for content filtering range from $2,500 to $15,000, according to John Bedrick, group product marketing manager.

Meanwhile, start-up iPolicy Networks has teamed with McAfee to offer McAfee anti-virus software as part of a new line of VPN/firewall-based IPS. The iPolicy Networks IPS appliances block worms and denial-of-service attacks, and provide anti-virus and Web-based content and spam filtering.

The iPolicy 2000, 3000 and 4000 series appliances can be used as gateway and internal firewall-based IPSs for small and midsize businesses, says Prabhu Goel, iPolicy's chairman and CEO.

Goel says the company's first product, the iPolicy 4800, introduced in the spring, runs at 2G bit/sec, supports 500,000 simultaneous connections and is used primarily by ISPs.

The latest iPolicy firewall-based IPS is intended to compete against products from FortiNet, TippingPoint Technologies, Internet Security Systems, Cisco and Check Point.

Meeting Professionals International, a trade group in Dallas, says it intends to deploy the firewall-based IPS. "It can give us protection from worms and hackers," says Al Noland, director of IT.

Read more about security in Network World's Security section.