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16
1.1
Overview
Malicious code, such as computer viruses, is one of the main threats for
companies today. When users began to use office applications with
macro capabilities to write documents and distribute them via mail and
groupware servers, macro viruses started spreading rapidly.
After the millennium, the most common spreading mechanism has been
the e-mail. Today about 90% of viruses arrive via e-mail. E-mails provide
a very fast and efficient way for viruses to spread without any user
intervention and this is why e-mail worm outbreaks, like Sobig, Netsky
and Mydoom, cause a lot of damage around the world.
The Internet is used by more and more people every day. It opens
another, so far dormant channel for viruses to spread, HTTP. Web surfing
is increasing rapidly as we are using the web to find information not only
for business but also for other purposes, such as hobbies, health, and so
on. It is very important to realize this early and to be proactive in
protecting our resources.
F-Secure Anti-Virus Mail Server and Gateway products are designed to
protect your company's mail and groupware servers and to shield the
company network from any malicious code that travels in HTTP,
FTP-over-HTTP or SMTP traffic. The protection can be implemented on
the gateway level to screen all incoming and outgoing e-mail (SMTP),
web surfing (HTTP) and file transfer (FTP-over-HTTP) traffic.
Furthermore, it can be implemented on the mail server level so that it not
only protects inbound and outbound traffic but also internal mail traffic and
public sources, such as Public Folders on Microsoft Exchange servers.
Providing the protection already on the gateway level has plenty of
advantages. The protection is easy and fast to set up and install, and it
complements the virus protection that is installed on the workstations. The
protection is also invisible to the end users which ensures that the system
cannot be by-passed and makes it easy to maintain. Of course, protecting
the gateway level alone is not enough to provide a complete anti-virus
solution; file server and workstation level protection is needed, too.
Why clean 1000 workstations when you can clean one attachment at the
gateway level?
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