Broadwing beefs up managed security

Broadwing this week plans to extend its new managed security portfolio with a service designed to mitigate viruses and spam .

The services are premises- and network-based, and are targeted at sites ranging from a branch office to a large headquarters location.

Last week, Broadwing unveiled a premises-based service designed to provide firewall management, intrusion detection and prevention, and enterprise vulnerability management. This week, the company is expected to roll out its network-based managed spam and virus protection services, which are intended to monitor and filter e-mail content for spam and virus, and then "scrub" those messages before delivery or redirect them to an e-mail quarantine.

This service is based on technology from MessageLabs.

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Broadwing this week plans to extend its new managed security portfolio with a service designed to mitigate viruses and spam .

The services are premises- and network-based, and are targeted at sites ranging from a branch office to a large headquarters location.

Last week, Broadwing unveiled a premises-based service designed to provide firewall management, intrusion detection and prevention, and enterprise vulnerability management. This week, the company is expected to roll out its network-based managed spam and virus protection services, which are intended to monitor and filter e-mail content for spam and virus, and then "scrub" those messages before delivery or redirect them to an e-mail quarantine.

This service is based on technology from MessageLabs.

The Broadwing spam and virus service is a supplement to a customer's e-mail server. The customer retains ownership and control of the e-mail server, while messages coming in through the Broadwing network are scrutinized and scrubbed.

The anti-virus service combines MessageLabs' proprietary Skeptic predictive technology with multiple commercial scanners to identify and stop existing and previously unknown threats. Skeptic uses artificial intelligence and learning from a knowledgebase of e-mail security threats to identify viruses, spam and pornography without the need for time-delayed updates.

The Broadwing virus service is backed by a service-level agreement (SLA) guaranteeing that no e-mail viruses or malware will reach the corporate network.

For spam, Broadwing offers no SLA guarantees even though MessageLabs touts a guaranteed capture rate of at least 95% and the assurance of a false positive commitment of 0.0004%. Broadwing says it is evaluating which spam metrics to enforce.

The service incorporates textual scanning, lexical analysis and attachment controls to identify and control confidential, malicious or inappropriate content in inbound and outbound e-mail. The service also uses image-composition analysis to identify inappropriate images.

The premises-based service offers the entire suite of Getronics' managed security services, including strong authentication, intrusion detection and prevention, identity theft prevention, security reporting and vulnerability assessment. Getronics is a $3.6 billion IT services company.

Broadwing intends to bundle Getronics' security services with its telecom services to help customers secure information assets and enhance business protection and continuity. The carrier offers guarantees of 15 minutes for incident notification and patches, and one hour for change controls.