Customers Pinpoint Business Need for Content Governance

Clearswift’s solutions provide corporations with a simplified and flexible way to address their content security concerns, according to analyst firm

London, UK – 15 January 2007 – Clearswift recently found that customers are looking for more granular content management strategies to handle their increasingly complex messaging environments. In the past, it found that customers were content with a just single solution such as an appliance-based gateway or a software-based product. However, the increase in messaging volume, rising percentage of spam, more sophisticated threats, and growing complexity of internal and external policy compliance requires a more granular approach that combines software, appliances, and even managed services into a comprehensive strategy that selectively filters, blocks, and reports on undesirable activity.

Highlighting these trends, a new Clearswift sponsored industry analyst report released today found that while organisations are keen to put strong corporate governance procedures in place, a complete content security solution is often missing from business plans.*

“Simple email filtering for viruses or inappropriate Web sites is no longer sufficient to protect corporations, employees, and partners. Complex enterprise threats increasingly arise from the interplay of external and internal factors such as IT staffing/funding limitations, internal policy management, external regulatory compliance, and social responsibility,” IDC Vice President of Security Products & Services, Christian Christiansen, said. “As a result, customers require granular and secure content management solutions that provide inbound and outbound content analysis of information for complete protection. These solutions also need to be simpler to understand, easier to implement, quicker to reconfigure for new threats and policies, and less onerous to administer.”

IDC predicts that as digital threats continue to develop, more companies will invest in content security solutions and as these solutions progress, they will become an integral part of how organisations do business. Companies will look for vendors that provide both the flexibility and capability to meet the business needs unique to their environment, culture and corporate sector. Clearswift offers solutions with flexible policies that can be adapted to suit each organisation and its requirements with the minimum of effort.

“Clearswift’s solutions provide corporations with a simplified and flexible way to address their content security concerns,” Christiansen said. “Clearswift provides deep content analysis of both inbound and outbound data, combined with granular policy management which allows IT administrators to easily configure the solution so that it meets their organisation’s needs in the best possible way.”

The range of solutions available is wide with appliances, software and managed services for companies to choose from. Each of these solutions provides different benefits and the report provides a summary of which solutions best fit an organisation’s needs depending on its size and the complexity of its policies.

Appliances provide rapid and straightforward deployment and companies lacking in time and resources will benefit most from them. Therefore, appliances work best for mid-sized companies or as part of a layered solution for larger enterprises. Software allows for a highly customised and tailored environment suitable for regulatory compliance. Although software is a useful solution for enterprises of all sizes, it is often expensive for SMEs and so is more popular with larger enterprises. Managed services allow SMEs to acquire content security without the expense of software or hardware applications. It can also work for larger enterprises in a layered security environment.

The white paper provides a summary of the content security market as a whole, looking at the threats that businesses are now facing. The document focuses on providing corporations with information on how they might best protect their companies and business interests from computer-related threats through the use of appliances, software, and services focused on SCM and includes case studies of businesses using such content security solutions. It concludes with an overview of Clearswift’s range of content security solutions. For more information or to see the white paper in full, please visit www.clearswift.com/news/resources/whitepapers.aspx.

*IDC White Paper sponsored by Clearswift, Corporate Self Protection: Email Security Reduces Internal and External Risks, Doc #204246, Nov 2006

About Clearswift

Clearswift simplifies content security.

Our products help organizations enforce best-practice email and web use, ensuring all traffic complies with internal policy and external regulations.

Our range of content filtering solutions makes it easy to deploy, manage and maintain no-compromise email and web security for both inbound and outbound traffic.

Clearswift is the only vendor to offer comprehensive, policy-based content security in all three deployment methods: as software, as an appliance and as a managed service.

All three platforms are designed to take the hassle out of securing internet traffic, with a clear, intuitive management interface; automatic, ’zero-touch’ updates; powerful reporting and common-sense policy management.

Twenty years of experience across 17,000 organizations has helped us raise security standards while simplifying security management at the same time.

We’ve helped many of the world’s most successful organizations use the internet with confidence and are committed to staying ahead of the market and helping our customers defend against all emerging threats.

Clearswift, MAILsweeper™, MIMEsweeper™, spamActive™ and ENTERPRISEsuite™ are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States, United Kingdom and certain other countries, of Clearswift Limited. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.

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Isabelle Duarte

Director of Communications

Clearswift

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