* Virtela helps its enterprise customers reduce threats from inbound e-mail
Virtela, a provider of managed VPN services, is now offering spam filtering, virus checking and content filtering to help its enterprise customers reduce threats from inbound e-mail.
Virtela’s Managed Mail Defense (https://www.level3.com/press/4167.html) includes virus checking for inbound and outbound e-mail using anti-virus software from McAfee Security and Sophos. Virtela uses multiple anti-spam filtering techniques with continuous updates. Virtela automatically filters e-mail for inappropriate content and quarantines questionable e-mail. Virtela also provides real-time monitoring and analysis of incoming e-mail threats to prevent e-mail server attacks.
With Virtela’s service, e-mail virus and spam checking occurs on Virtela’s IP backbone rather than at the customer’s edge devices. This outsourced approach saves companies money from having to buy anti-virus and anti-spam software, train staff to run these programs, and dedicate network resources to handle large volumes of spam.
“Spam is a big cost issue,” says Jeff Phillips, director of marketing at Virtela. “For Virtela, 45% of our inbound e-mail is spam….One of our customers filtered 2,000 viruses in one month using our service.”
Virtela allows network administrators and end users to set e-mail quarantine policies and view usage reports and graphs.
Virtela’s existing VPN customers can activate the service within 24 hours. The service costs between $1.50 and $4.00 per employee depending on the package purchased and number of employees.
Virtela’s Managed Mail Defense service already has one high-profile customer: Extreme Networks. Extreme Networks chose Virtela’s outsourced e-mail security service after evaluating several software packages and determining how much it would cost to run them. Extreme Networks also uses Virtela’s VPN service.
“Extreme was out evaluating different boxes and software to deploy and manage inappropriate [e-mail] content on their own,” Phillips says. “We told them what we were looking to roll out. We explained that they weren’t able to get the sophistication they wanted without multiple vendor solutions, and that it was not something they could set up once. It was something they would have to keep on top of on an ongoing basis.”
Several of Virtela’s competitors including AT&T, Sprint and Infonet also offer anti-spam and virus-checking services.
