Securing e-mail takes spotlight

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates continues to focus on security issues, zeroing in on spam as particularly destructive.

Gates spoke at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2004, where a series of products aimed at soothing corporate worries about spam and regulatory compliance were unveiled.

In his keynote, Gates said the most dangerous type of spam is a social engineering attack that spoofs a sender’s identity. The key to solving the spam problem is to verify sender identities, a capability that was not built into SMTP, Gates said.

“It turns out this verify-sender element — the caller ID in e-mail — is key to solving spam,” Gates said. “Every [message] coming in needs to be verified.”

Isolating virus outbreaks and improving firewall administration are necessary steps toward achieving better security, Gates said.

Internet Security Systems used the show to unveil its Proventia intrusion prevention appliance. Designed for high-bandwidth, high-capacity networking environments, the Proventia G1000 and G1000F appliances offer pre-emptive protection against known and unknown attacks.

Tightening corporate systems to comply with government legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley was another focus at ITxpo. As corporate leaders jump-start compliance efforts, tools for e-mail archiving and management are gaining prominence.

Also at the show, KVS released its Enterprise Vault Version 5 archiving software for e-mail, file system documents, instant messages, and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server documents. Enterprise Vault is designed to give users a modular framework for customizing archiving policies across multiple systems.

BT Syntegra rolled out an e-mail management platform that allows administrators to manage spam, viruses, filtering, and archival compliance from a single console. Message Management Platform integrates with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Novell GroupWise. It is available as a hosted service or as an installed product.