Verisign To Offer E-Mail Security

This week the company, which processes almost 30 percent of all Web transaction payments, unveiled its Managed E-Mail Security and Anti-Phishing services, offerings that "move security into the cloud," said Mark Griffiths, vice president of security services at VeriSign, Mountain View, Calif.

Both services are slated to become available July 17, and VeriSign is recruiting resellers to offer them either directly to customers or in MSP fashion. "We are looking to build a channel around this," Griffiths said.

Licensed from e-mail security firm FrontBridge, the new VeriSign Managed E-Mail Security tool includes spam filtering that uses blacklists, heuristic scoring and polymorphic spam detection to ensure that only legitimate e-mail moves forward to customers' inboxes. The tool's virus detection is updated every 10 minutes, and all questionable e-mail is quarantined to allow for review by administrators. The tool is managed via a Web-based interface that can be customized according to a customer's messaging policies, Griffiths said.

VeriSign's Anti-Phishing service is designed to combat the use of bogus Web sites to gather personal information from users. VeriSign will be offering tools ranging from prevention and detection of phishing scams to cyberforensics methods that can track phishing schemes, shut them down and provide evidence for prosecution. VeriSign's own domain name registration service even comes into play in combating phishing, as it enables VeriSign to monitor new URLs that are being registered and determine whether they are similar to those already being used by businesses.

John Lally, vice president of marketing at ISP Interland, Atlanta, said the new offerings will be welcome additions to the services his company already provides.

"Awareness of the need for e-mail security has increased dramatically with our customers, which are in the SMB space," Lally said. "Customers are no longer reacting, they're proactive, meaning spam has become a business issue [to them], not just a tech issue."

VeriSign is ramping up a full channel program that should arrive next year, Griffiths said.