Trend Micro's ScanMail for Lotus Notes v2.0 ICSA certified for Notes environment

SecureData, an ERP.com company and the exclusive sub-Saharan distributors of Trend Micro, a leader in enterprise antivirus and content security, today announced that its antivirus solution for the Lotus Notes environment, ScanMail for Lotus Notes v.2.0, is one of the first products to earn ICSA Certification for Notes by the Anti-Virus Product Developers Consortium. This new certification category was initiated earlier this year to include products that protect the Notes collaborative messaging and groupware platform, which is increasingly used by organisations for its features and integration. To achieve ICSA Anti-Virus Certification, products are tested for their ability to detect 100% of the "in the wild" viruses in On-Access and On-Demand conditions.

According to the Computer Security Institute's recent annual survey, 90% of respondents, mostly corporations and government agencies, detected computer security breaches in the last year while 85% reported virus attacks. Although most widespread viruses appear to take advantage of Outlook and Exchange users running on Windows, viruses also pose a serious threat to Notes environments due to the viruses' use of Messaging Application Interface (MAPI) code, for which Notes is compliant. The replication feature within Domino Notes can quickly move viruses between servers and down to clients.

ScanMail for Lotus Notes provides the only antivirus support for Lotus Domino on Windows NT, AS/400 and S/390 IBM platforms, AIX and Sun Solaris platforms. Using real-time email virus-scanning feature, viruses can be detected and cleaned from incoming messages before they have a chance to infect the desktop. To optimise server performance ScanMail for Lotus Notes checks mail at the router before copies are made. Modified data can be scanned within the database during the replication stage, and on-demand scanning is provided to clean any existing database infections.

"Given the increase in virus encounters through email, it's imperative that security products are designed for comprehensive virus detection and management solutions suited to the structure of the enterprise environment," commented Larry Bridwell, content security program manager at ICSA Labs. "Our certifications take the guesswork out of determining the effectiveness of products like Trend Micro's ScanMail."

ICSA sets standards for commercial security products and provides independent and objective cross-industry product certification programs. The ICSA Labs Product Certification Program provides objective assurance to the computer user community that those products that receive certification provide and maintain the highest standard of virus detection and reduces security threats associated with Internet use. The Anti-Virus Product Developers Consortium (AVPD), is a forum for the exchange of information among leading antivirus product developers, and supports an industry-wide standard for the testing and certification of antivirus products.

"The rest of the antivirus industry is finally taking notice of platforms such as Notes," said Wayne Biehn, Sales Director, SecureData. "The enhanced messaging and file sharing features of the Notes application only re-emphasises the need for virus protection at the server level. Third party certification, like ICSA's, gives our customers peace of mind."

ICSA's virus libraries and test suites are updated at least monthly and products are randomly tested every 60 days to assure they are current. Products that fail spot checks from the previous month's library must correct the problem and ship the solution or lose their certification status. The complete criteria for certifications can be found at http://www.icsa.net/html/communities/antivirus/certification/.