MessageLabs Launches Next Generation Email Control Services

Image Control is a multi-layered service that scans and detects inappropriate images, such as pornography, in inbound and outbound email. The feature enhancements have been developed to address the growing regulatory, compliance and email security issues facing businesses today.

"Businesses are increasingly dependent on email as a primary communication tool," said Michael D. Osterman, President, Osterman Research. "But it presents several risks for controlling confidential and valuable information from leaving the organization. Content filtering -- inspecting the content of messages before they are sent -- will assume a more important role within messaging management as a means of mitigating risks and managing corporate liability, and to make businesses feel more confident about their email systems."

Offered as managed services, MessageLabs Control Services facilitate the enforcement of acceptable use policies for email and make possible relevant regulatory and legislative compliance by monitoring and controlling image and text-based email content into and out of organizations. The services are highly customizable to corporate messaging environments and allow for various sensitivity settings and routing options. The new functionality offers added granularity and flexibility in line with various corporate email security policies for protecting intellectual property and safeguarding against the risk of litigation.

"Every organization has vast amounts of valuable, and often confidential, information moving across their email systems each day," said Jos White, President, MessageLabs. "Taking a proactive, technology based approach to email policy enforcement and security removes the risk of a violation either through human error or misconduct. The clean up costs and reputation damage from sexual harassment claims, costly litigation, disclosure or loss of confidential information, defamation of character or breach of contract are significant. Enhancements to our control services provide greater control for assisting in regulatory compliance and greater confidence in email use policy enforcement by allowing the level of analysis and protection to match an organization's individual security requirements."

Key Feature Enhancements of MessageLabs Control Services

The MessageLabs Control Services (Content Control and Image Control) benefit from the use of advanced technology powered by MessageLabs Skeptic, which requires processing of fewer inbound emails. Key feature enhancements include:

-- Scanning within Microsoft® Office documents: ensures that Word,
PowerPoint and Excel files are also analyzed for allowable content (Content
Control and Image Control)

-- Improved accuracy of Image Composition Analysis (ICA) scanner: offers
a multi-layered approach incorporating multiple algorithms to analyze a
wide range of image attributes, including face recognition, body
positioning, texture and flesh tones for increased accuracy and performance
(Image Control)

-- Configurable notifications: enables an administrator to change the
text within a notification to reflect the rule contents to a greater degree
(Content Control and Image Control)

-- Unpacking of archived (also know as compressed) file types: to scan
file extensions and MIME types configured within an organization's email
acceptable use policy (Content Control)

-- Updated, user-friendly management interface: eliminates drilling down
to see rule details by moving rule management actions to the front rule
page (Content Control)

-- Extended character set recognition: provides the ability to enter
specific words or phrases in non-Western characters for recognition within
email and its attachments (Content Control)

MessageLabs Control Services are offered as two discrete services:

-- MessageLabs Email Content Control v3.0 -- Proactively identifies and
controls content reaching or leaving an organization. The service can
replicate an organization's email security policy via a set of defined
rules and allows management of the service on a user-by-user basis.

-- MessageLabs Email Image Control v2.0 -- As a monitoring and control
tool, helps protect organizations against hostility in the workplace and
sexual harassment lawsuits related to incoming and outgoing inappropriate
images. The service uses multi-layered Image Composition Analysis (ICA) to
identify inappropriate images going beyond the flesh tone analyzers found
in other services to provide more accurate detection of pornographic and
other unwanted images.

About MessageLabs

MessageLabs is a leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services, with over 15,000 clients ranging from small business to the Fortune 500 located in more than 80 countries. MessageLabs provides a range of managed security services to protect, control, encrypt and archive communications across Email, Web and Instant Messaging.

These services are delivered by MessageLabs globally distributed infrastructure and supported 24/7 by security experts. This provides a convenient and cost-effective solution for managing and reducing risk and providing certainty in the exchange of business information. For more information, please visit www.messagelabs.com.

Media Contacts:

US:
Marissa Vicario
MessageLabs
+1 646.519.8116

Weber Shandwick for MessageLabs
+1 212.445.8000

EMEA:
Kirsten Ackroyd
MessageLabs
+44 (0) 207 291 7939

Weber Shandwick for MessageLabs
+44 (0) 20 7067 0500

APAC:
Andrew Antal
MessageLabs
+61 2 8208 7171

Saxon Shirley
Spectrum Communications
+61 2 9954 3299

SOURCE: MessageLabs