Clearswift upgrades MIMEsweeper™ for SMTP to boost Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities

Version 5.3 also sees introduction of support for Microsoft Office 2007 & OpenOffice formats

Redwood City, CA—July 2008— Clearswift has today released a new version of its advanced content security tool, MIMEsweeper for SMTP, to strengthen organisations’ Data Loss Prevention capabilities.

MIMEsweeper for SMTP is a sophisticated e-mail security and management system designed to comprehensively address the complex security layers, policies, processes and procedures that larger distributed enterprises face. The solution provides the flexibility to tailor day-to-day management of e-mail infrastructures to specific organisational needs. It scans outbound e-mail messages to ensure that they match an organisation’s e-mail policy ensuring that any messages containing sensitive or inappropriate information blocked or routed according to the stated policy based upon enforcing multiple outcomes based upon sender, recipient or content.

Data Loss Prevention

MIMEsweeper solutions have traditionally been used by companies wishing to control the content of outgoing e-mails. This new version sees the introduction of yet more features designed to help enterprises deal with their ever increasing Data Loss Prevention concerns. MIMEsweeper for SMTP is now able to deconstruct and selectively inspect document properties (metadata), along with their headers, footers and body-text for pre-defined keywords or phrases. For example, companies will now be able to choose to block any document containing the words “Company Confidential” in the footer, and only allow documents stating “Approved Template” in the metadata properties, to leave the network. The MIMEsweeper for SMTP content engine now also recognises data such as PCI (credit card) and PII (National Insurance) and hundreds of other forms of protected document tags, including watermarks.

Richard Turner, CEO at Clearswift, commented: “The issue of data loss prevention is rising up the CIO’s agenda and the enhancements to MIMEsweeper for SMTP reflect this trend. With this latest version, we are providing a robust and scalable solution, which is ideally suited to large enterprises with complex policy requirements, and yet cost effective and quick to implement.”

Lexical analysis has been expanded specifically for DLP and combined with pre-canned PCI and PII settings, preventing employees from uploading or sending documents containing credit card numbers. These advanced features can also be used to stop information such as social security numbers, patient identifiers or other personal identifiers from leaking out of the company. This is particularly important for businesses concerned with compliance with HIPAA, SEC, SOX and GLBA regulations.

System Management Enhancements

Clearswift has also added several features that will benefit large organisations running complex environments. Customer feedback has led to the introduction of a multi-domain management feature, which will support customers running thousands of users across multiple domains, as well as those organisations undergoing mergers or acquisitions.

Clearswift recognises the ever-increasing diversity of companies’ user bases, particularly across large enterprises, and so extended the localisation of the Personal Message Manager (PMM) interface to support eight new languages (Swedish, Russian, Polish, Slovenian, Czech, Greek, Dutch and Danish) in addition to English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish.