CA readies multi-function security tool

Computer Associates this fall plans to ship security and policy-enforcement software to fight viruses and spam, to filter Web content in accordance with corporate use policies, and to block peer-to-peer file sharing.

CA’s eTrust Secure Content Management marks the first time CA has sought to integrate security for the Web, e-mail and file transfers into one software package. The software will run on Windows platforms and will include CA's desktop antivirus product. Ian Hameroff, CA's business manager for security solutions, said eTrust Secure Content Management will cost $55 per seat, but only half that for users of CA's antivirus products that want to upgrade.

"That does sound appealing, and we're going to take a look at it and see if it works in our environment," says Dave Lydick, Windows NT administrator at Altoona, Pa., retail-store chain Sheetz, which uses the CA eTrust antivirus products. Sheetz has over 7,500 employees and 270 stores.

"We're going to be a beta customer because we do want to do content filtering, especially the peer-to-peer applications like Kazaa," says Lydick. "P2P poses the danger of copyright violations. We'd like to be able to set a policy in place at the gateway and try to stop P2P use."

The management console for eTrust Secure Content Management will "give a bird’s-eye view" of the antispam, antivirus and content-filtering activity through the gateway, said Hameroff. "There will also be a user self-service [feature] so the user can decide which e-mails are spam and which are not when the mail is blocked and held at the gateway."

This will alleviate the need for the administrator to look at all the quarantined mail, said Hameroff, adding the Secure Content Management reports can be set up to be delivered to the administrator on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

The market for antispam and content-filtering software is heating up, with Symantec and Network Associates, which both have a large installed base of antivirus software customers, focusing on new products for this area and combining multiple security functions into one product, usually in a hardware-based appliance. Several smaller security vendors, such as BorderWare and CipherTrust, also have antispam and content-filtering appliances available.

Hameroff declined to say how many messages eTrust Secure Content Management might be able to process per hour to filter out spam or malicious code, noting that the product is still under development and won't ship until the fall. But he said that CA itself, with 16,000 employees, is now beta-testing it.