New Cisco email services to enhance security and management

Cisco has announced two new appliance-based email services that could help businesses handle compliance, management and security issues.

IronPort Outbreak Filters uses a combination of a malware-signature database and on-the-fly analytics to scan incoming emails to determine if any are spam or link to malicious payloads. Cisco claims the Filters can analyse not only text, but images, attachments, hidden code and scripts too.

If a user clicks on a link leading to a malware-infested webpage, the user will be redirected to a warning page instead.

Meanwhile, IronPort Business Class Email apparently includes extensive email security controls, such as recalling messages, message expiration and deciding who can forward an email and to whom. Depending on what other infrastructure their company has in place and what other services they use, Business Class Email users may also be able to use their email account user name and password to log into other services.

Administrators will also be able to enforce minimum levels of password complexity.

According to Soni Jiandani, Cisco's senior vice president of the Server Access and Virtualisation Technology Group, the IronPort services are examples of the benefits of proactive network-based security that customers can reply on instead of having to install and manage their own endpoint security checks.

Both Outbreak Filters and Business Class Email run on top of Cisco's existing range of C-series email security appliances which are available now.