Administrative overhead may be as big a business driver as security threats among companies adopting hardware appliances to
protect enterprise e-mail accounts, according to vendors offering products in this category.
Sophos on Wednesday released two versions of its e-mail appliance, the ES1000 and ES4000, which are designed to block malware and
spam before it can enter the e-mail gateway. Along with filters and intrusion-detection software, machines like the Sophos
products offer a more hardware-based approach to combating potentially dangerous attacks on enterprise networks.
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Mike Haro, senior security advisor at Boston-based Sophos, said administrators are already too strapped for time and resources
to deal with IT-enabled business processes to manually monitor all the potential threats that come through e-mail messages.
"Three years ago, as multi-function appliances really came onto the market, ROI was perceived as the value behind using an
appliance versus a software solution," he said. "Today, we believe that ROI tends to be calculated based upon how significant
of a reduction in administration overhead you can achieve."
The Sophos appliances include automated policy enforcement, for example, that notify administrators when rules around what
kind of information is sent out or received are violated, or data leakage. It also tracks 60 sensors -- including one that
Haro called a "heartbeat monitor" that checks the overall health of the e-mail systems -- and send information directly to
a user's handheld device, such as a BlackBerry.
"We're pushing information to the admin. A lot of other appliances ask the admin go to the console and see what's going on,"
he said. Sophos, which counts DaimlerChrysler among its appliance customers, also offers the option to manage the appliances
in a hosted environment on users' behalf.
The e-mail appliance market is already saturated with products from Barracuda Networks, IronPort, Symantec and Trend Micro,
but Sara Radicati, an analyst based in Palo Alto, said she expects a lot more competition in this space.
For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld,
Inc.
