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Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0

For many businesses, e-mail has become the communication of choice. Unfortunately, e-mail has also become the communication of choice for schemers, hackers, advertisers, virus writers and so many others, which saps the efficiency of email for legitimate use.

Solution providers have turned to security vendors for the tools to combat productivity draining unsolicited e-mail. Many of those tools only address part of the problem, which has forced solution providers to integrate a mishmash of products to offer the proper levels of protection.

Symantec hopes to reinvent the e-mail security market with the release of Symantec Mail Security for SMTP 5.0, a software product that brings antispam, antivirus and content filtering under a single management umbrella. What’s more, the product’s intelligent handling of e-mail protects against e-mail borne threats such as phishing schemes and the passing of confidential information.

While on the surface Symantec’s product doesn’t seem to break any new ground, that assessment couldn’t be any farther from the truth. What Symantec has accomplished with Mail Security for SMTP 5.0 is a synergy between what were once very different technologies. Instead of an administrator having to worry about multiple e-mail threats in various forms, threat management is now under the realm of a single, comprehensive security system. It becomes a simple method of dictating whether an e-mail is safe or unsafe, all in a single process.

Symantec has accomplished that by combining the best-of-breed capabilities from the previous generation of Mail Security for SMTP with the robust feature set of the recently acquired Brightmail antispam product line. Symantec’s expertise with antivirus technology and content filtering applications are also integrated into the product.

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