Microsoft Tuesday offered free trial versions of its forthcoming anti-virus and anti-spam software for e-mail that it obtained last
year when it acquired Sybari Software.
The company introduced its first Microsoft versions and the licensing terms for its Antigen e-mail hygiene software, and said
the finished products would ship July 1.
The products are: Antigen for Exchange, which provides anti-virus capabilities; Antigen for SMTP Gateways, which provides
anti-virus and content filtering for Windows Server 2000 and 2003 SMTP gateways; Antigen Spam Manager, which provides anti-spam
capabilities; and Antigen Enterprise Manager, a centralized management console for the Antigen lineup.
All the software supports Exchange 2000 and 2003.
Microsoft is adding its own virus-scanning engine to Antigen for Exchange, which is based on the GeCad technology it acquired
in 2003. Antigen for Exchange also supports engines from CA, Norman Data Defense, Sophos, MailFilters, VirusBuster, AhnLab,
Authentium and Kaspersky Labs.
In addition, Microsoft has added clustering support, new signature updates that are digitally signed by Microsoft, and management
features to support the Antigen lineup.
“What has been nice is the reporting and enterprise management features they have added,” says Mark Longwell, a senior software
architect for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a long-time user of the former Sybari products.
“We are asked for statistics on everything including anti-virus and spam, for compliance, sometimes it is an executive wanting
to check on our investment. We have a significant investment in protecting our e-mail system.”
