WatchGuard enhances e-mail security solutions

WatchGuard Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, released an update to its award-winning XCS (extensible content security) line of e-mail and Web content security appliances.

This latest software upgrade is available for free and includes new features that make stopping spam even easier, as well as new e-mail encryption capabilities.

George Kruger, WatchGuard Product Manager for Robinson Distribution (official sub-Saharan distributor for WatchGuard), commented: “With WatchGuard's XCS Appliance improvements to stop spam, as well as its new encryption capabilities, our customers are safe from spam.”

With this latest update, business users can utilise a new WatchGuard XCS add-in for Outlook. This new feature allows end-users to easily mark any delivered messages that bypass the XCS spam filters as either "spam" or "not spam".

This way, the end-user gains the ability to report false positives, where legitimate messages were marked as spam, as well as false negatives, where a good message was tagged mistakenly as spam. In addition, the tool adds senders to the end-user's personal "trusted" or "blocked" senders list. These features improve overall XCS efficacy while giving users more control over their messages.

Addressing the growing concern of how businesses manage sensitive e-mail, WatchGuard strengthens its XCS line with SecureMail Email Encryption.

This allows end-users to encrypt outbound messages directly from the WatchGuard XCS appliance without the need for a local encryption server or additional desktop software.

Messages are secure until they are delivered and unencrypted via a simple authentication process by the message recipient.

This feature can also be customised as a branded service for organisations that wish to promote their brand as part of their commitment to highly secure e-mail communications.

All of these appliances share best-in-class quality detection for maximum coverage and accuracy, as well as rapid response capabilities for zero-day threat outbreaks, and automatic updates to protect against new forms of crimeware, spyware, rootkits, mobile malware and other malicious attacks.

Additionally, all of the WatchGuard XCS appliances can take advantage of WatchGuard's revolutionary in-the-cloud security technology, Reputation Enabled Defense. Reputation Enabled Defense eliminates up to 98.3% of spam e-mail before it ever gets to a business network.

Given that spam messages are a major carrier of viruses, phishing attempts and blended threats, having Reputation Enabled Defense pre-screen and eliminate this unwanted traffic makes business networks, applications and data better protected as part of WatchGuard's defence-in-depth architecture.