Compliance and encryption are becoming must-have features for corporate e-mail security, as evidenced by a number of announcements
made on Monday.
McAfee announced an upgrade to its Secure Messaging Gateway and Secure Internet Gateway appliances with enhancements to the
module that automatically scans outbound messages for content protected by regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, or
by corporate policies, according to company officials. The module now includes PostX’s lexicons of terms and checks outbound
messages against them to ensure regulatory compliance and privacy, scanning for a combination of personal data such as social
security numbers and bank account information, they say.
Once messages containing sensitive data are flagged, administrators can set the appliance to automatically block or encrypt
them via a third-party product or with the included Transport Layer Security encryption option, officials say.
The upgraded module is sensitive enough to detect nuances such as non-standard driver’s license numbers, says Simon Earl,
network security consultant with Dee-IT, an IT specialist firm based in Portsmouth, U.K. The consulting firm has been installing
McAfee security appliances at customer sites for the past seven or eight months, says Earl, and finds the compliance enhancements
particularly important. “A lot of clients in the U.K. are getting nervous about Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA,” he says, referring
to those clients wanting to do business with U.S. companies that fall under these federal regulations.
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