April 11, 2007

FEATURE EDITORIAL

Mitigating Email Downtime

With the ever increasing reliance on email communications in business, comes the IT task of constant management. Email continuity has become a key part of business operations. Teneros a provider for high availability and disaster recovery of MS Exchange, has sponsored a King Research survey indicating the serious impact of email downtime. 220 IT professionals responsible for messaging systems in mid-market companies participated. The survey notes that finding time for email server maintenance, application and operating system software updates, database maintenance, and other ongoing maintenance is a constant challenge for IT teams.

In addition, they must spend time addressing server and site outages beyond their control due to power outages, Internet access failure, server problems, plus natural, or human disasters. Microsoft Exchange was the predominant email system used by participants.

The report found that the greatest challenge in maintaining Exchange servers is scheduling downtime to perform regularly required server and application updates and maintenance - even for brief periods of 2 hours or less per month. The survey also revealed that 65 percent of participants impose a size limit on employee mailboxes - using it as a means to manage email growth. Only 20 percent of those who limit mailbox size did so in a consistent way. All others report making exceptions to this limit, for executives (56 percent) or increasing mailbox size for any user who asks (11 percent).

With the growing requirement of compliance and eDiscovery, the survey revealed an interesting data point on email archiving. According to 45 percent of the survey respondents that use Microsoft Exchange for corporate email, they do not use, nor do they plan to use an archiving product as part of their email continuity planning.

The research also suggests that while mitigating email downtime is critical to a business, it has yet to translate into increased spending on technology and human resources to prevent downtime. Only 18 percent of participants reported an increase in IT staff, and 77 percent cited that the size of their team has not changed in the past twelve months.

More information and a full copy of the report is available at www.ApplicationContinuity.org/

Real-time Threat Protection Solution for ISPs

The growing volumes and variety of spam and malware especially image spam and virus variants emitted by botnets have eluded traditional anti-spam and anti-virus engines in the past year. As a result, the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) job of protecting their customers has become increasingly more complex.

Email software solutions provider Message Systems and Commtouch Software announced recently that the two companies are working together to provide real-time threat protection solutions to ISPs high volume email delivery platform. Under the terms of the OEM licensing agreement, Message Systems has embedded Commtouch's Anti-Spam, Zero-Hour Virus Outbreak Protection and Reputation Service technologies into its email software solution.

"By running Commtouch anti-threat solutions natively on the Message Systems email solution, we are presenting ISPs with a comprehensive turnkey carrier solution capable of handling massive amounts of email per second," said Barry Abel, vice president of field operations for Message Systems. "Together, we stop all types of spam and viruses at the perimeter in real-time in a completely automated manner before the malware can penetrate the network."

While the Commtouch product is included in other solutions, Message Systems offering is different, says Abel. "The majority of Commtouch's customers are either managed service providers or run a stand alone server running the Commtouch solutions. This means that the mail must be accepted then handed to the Commtouch server for scanning and then passed to either the mail store or another server in the chain. What's unique here is that the Commtouch solution runs in real time in the Message Systems server at the edge of the network and can make determination on the mail prior to acceptance. This means that for most service providers more than 90 percent of inbound mail can be rejected at the gate. This in turn reduces the number of servers required to process mail, reduces the amount of disk required to store messages that should never have been accepted and simplifies the life of email operations personnel. Since Message Systems runs in a clustered environment we simplify the process one step further with a single point of administration that configures all servers within a cluster, provides true fail over and a web console that displays a real time view of the health and well being of the entire enterprise."

The three security tiers in the integrated Message Systems-Commtouch solution include Traffic Flow Control to block abuse at the edge, Aggressive Filtering comprised of anti-spam, anti-virus and reputation engines at the center layer, and Backend System Connectivity for innermost layer protection to satisfy mail flow requirements between external systems and achieve complete abuse policy enforcement. "The Commtouch solution has been integrated into the Message Systems Carrier suite to offer more fire power at the gate to determine the validity of mail based on AV, AS and reputation (gray list) analysis," concludes Abel.

The product is now available.

IN THE NEWS

Rich Media Internet Communications

At last month's Spring Von in San Jose, CommuniGate Systems showcased its CommuniGate Pro the first Rich Media Internet Communications platform to offer subscribers access to a single source for email, collaboration, voice/video, and mobile Internet Communications. It provides a choice of clients -- IP phones, soft clients, traditional telephony, mobile devices, browsers, and IM agents -- all through a single account. The product provides a single solution for VoIP, data communications, and collaboration services with a full development environment. The company says it holds the world record for performance and scalability, and creates new revenue and subscriber retention potential for broadband and wireless providers. The company also offers OpenHand, a joint solution for push email for mobile handsets. OpenHand integrates with CommuniGate Pro for email, calendar, and folder access.

We welcome your ideas and your news for Messaging Newswire’s News & Trends in Email Security. Let us know what you think by sending your comments to sjordan@messagingnews.com. Written or compiled by Stephanie Jordan. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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