Appliances mainstream in email security

Yesterday, on his Computerworld blog, Curt wondered whether appliances are mainstream, or even dominating the email security market...

Mainstream? Definitely. Witness vendors such as Barracuda (frighteningly inexpensive, now with a mature product range), IronPort (investing heavily), CipherTrust (arguably the segment leader), etc. etc. As further proof, the two big traditional software security vendors are also launching appliances: that's McAfee and Symantec. Many organizations are attracted to the "fit and forget" promise of appliances. There's less to worry about.

But dominating? No. Growth rates are impressive, but today the major revenues are still from traditional software solutions. Hosted solutions also challenge the appliance segment, in terms of revenue (e.g. Microsoft's new beau, FrontBridge).

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest people are switching from software to appliances. But equal amounts to suggest switching from appliances to hosted. There's no clear trend: it looks like all three segments will continue to hold substantial chunks of the market.

Categories: spam, virus, malware, appliances.

Bastardcast July 25 - Jedeye - We Are Illusion (Wuthering Heights Remix)

Jedeye - We Are Illusion (Wuthering Heights Remix)

More Jedeye here.

BTW, rec.music.gaffa reports that Kate Bush is working on a new album. Where have we heard that before? ;-)

Categories: podcast, Kate Bush, bootleg, mashup, bastard pop, bastardcast.

Pictures from Prague

Come an' get 'em while they're hot.

Tags: Prague, Czech Republic.

Breaking news: Microsoft buys FrontBridge

Gosh:

Today at 1:30 PM (PT), Microsoft announced its intent to acquire FrontBridge Technologies, Inc., a leading provider of managed services for message security, compliance, and continuity. FrontBridge is a privately-held company based in Los Angeles, CA with services trusted by more than 3,100 businesses worldwide, delivered through an impressive partner network including AT&T, Equant, IBM, NEC, Siemens Business Services, Inc., Sprint, TELUS, and VeriSign. With this acquisition, Microsoft will deliver services for:

• Message Compliance: Mitigate compliance and e-discovery risk through a fully-managed e-mail and instant message archiving, retrieval and reporting service.
• Message Security: Secure messaging infrastructure from internal and external threats through the use of multi-layered filtering technologies and encryption.
• Message Continuity: Ensure e-mail availability and disaster recovery continuity during emergency scenarios through the high availability and redundancy of the FrontBridge network made up of eight data centers located around the globe.

FrontBridge is of course one of the "big four" hosted anti-spam solutions (yeah, I know, they do AV, DR, and crypto, yadda yadda). So who fancies buying MessageLabs, MX Logic, and Postini? And what of smaller, regional providers, such as BlackSpider?

Categories: spam, virus, malware, Microsoft, Exchange, FrontBridge, MessageLabs, MX Logic, Postini, BlackSpider.

Webinar: Reputation Services - Your First Line of Defense Against Spam, Phishing, and Emerging Threats

[Updated: this webinar has already happened, but there'll probably be a repeat performance in August. Please subscribe to this blog for notification of future events.]

Please join us July 26th for a free webinar, with the chance to win a free Sony digital camera:

• Is spam overwhelming your available resources?
• Are phishing attacks keeping you up at night?
• How do you tell the good guys from the bad?

Trend Micro invites you to a one hour webinar, where we will discuss:

• How reputation services can help you stop spam, phishing attacks and other emerging threats at their source -before they enter your network and affect business productivity
• Which reputation services have the most to offer?
• Current status of authentication standards

Date: Tuesday, July 26th, 2005

Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm Pacific Time

Topic: "Reputation Services - Your First Line of Defense Against Spam, Phishing, and Emerging Threats"

Attend: Click here to register online

Prize Drawing: All attendees will be automatically entered to win a free SONY CYBERSHOT digital camera!

Also receive a FREE White Paper "Network-Centric Spam Control Soutions" for attending!

Drawing to take place the day of the event. Drawing participants are not required to register for the webinar nor attend to win. Please see Official Rules for details on how to enter the drawing without registering for the webinar.

Speakers

• Richi Jennings, Principal Consultant for Richi Jennings Associates. Mr. Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant specializing in email, Linux, blogging, and computer security. For more information, see www.richi.co.uk.

• Dave Rand, Chief Technologist for Internet Content Security for Trend Micro, North America. Mr. Rand co-founded Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS) the first anti-spam company and launched the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL®), the standard for DNS-based IP reputation services.

• John Maddison, Senior Director for Network Security Services for Trend Micro, North America. Mr. Maddison is Senior Director of Product Management for Trend Micro responsible for the development of security products for the Enterprise and Service Provider markets.

Tags: spam, MAPS, Kelkea, Dave Rand, RBL, Trend, Trend Micro.