Trend Micro Offers HTTP Virus-Scanning Tool
Trend Micro Inc. on Monday announced a new gateway anti-virus product designed specifically to stop viruses coming in through Web traffic. InterScan Web Security Suite inspects HTTP and FTP traffic and is meant for the high-end enterprise market, where speed and performance are major considerations.
The new offering from Trend Micro is aimed at eliminating the threat posed by Web-based e-mail services. Many corporations have banned employee use of such services because there's no real way to control what information is sent out of the corporate environment, nor what types of viruses, Trojans or other malware are coming in. Free Web mail services are favorite targets of spammers, who often lace their messages with spyware or other undesirable software.
Typical anti-virus gateways inspect and clean mail messages coming in over the SMTP protocol, which is used by most of the major enterprise mail solutions. Desktop anti-virus is also focused on SMTP traffic, and most AV clients have no ability to inspect e-mails that corporate employees send using services such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, which are both Web-based and use HTTP.
