Virus protection firm Trend Micro has clinched a deal
with Nokia to partner on content management security
services for enterprise clients.
Trend Micro and Nokia plan to roll out
a new appliance — the Nokia Message Protector SC6600 — for the enterprise
clients, which serves as a dedicated SMTP message protector sitting at the
Internet gateway.
The Nokia-Trend Micro promises “defense-in-depth email protection” and
includes tools for statistical virus protection, SPAM rejection and
intelligent exploit rejection.
“The system is designed to ensure maximum integrity and uptime of the
enterprise messaging infrastructure and internal tests show that it can scan
more than 120,000 messages per hour,” said Dan MacDonald, vice president of
Nokia’s Internet Communication unit. The appliance will bundle Trend
Micro’s virus protection software with Nokia’s update processes and will
feature hot-swappable drives and RAID 1 protection.
Officials say the Message Protector SC6600 appliance would be sold
exclusively through Nokia and backed by its “First call, Final resolution”
support network, which features a single point of contact for all support
issues.
The companies did not release a price point for the appliance and a company
official said details of its commercial availability would be available in
early 2003.
For Trend Micro, the deal is significant because it now appears Nokia will
part ways with Network Associates-owned McAfee.com, which provides
virus-protection services to Nokia’s content-based appliances. Trend Micro
competes directly with Network Associates , Computer
Associates and Symantec in the anti-virus software space.
Nokia officials count not be reached to discuss how the McAfee partnership
affects the deal with rival Trend Micro but the Nokia announcement featured
rave reviews from MacDonald on Trend Micro’s “proven innovation and market
leadership in anti-virus and content security solutions.”
“They (Trend Micro) bring an important strategic component to Nokia’s
network security system approach,” MacDonald added.
He said the Nokia-Trend Micro appliance would tackle e-mail borne exploits
which harm overall network integrity by delivering tools for statistical
protection, secure automatic updating, and unmatched throughput and
reliability.
The Message Protector SC6600 would be immediately available for medium- to
large-scale enterprises and extended to the small business and consumer
markets in the future.
Nokia’s Internet Communications unit, which is based in Mountain View,
Calif., hawks network security, Virtual Private Network VPN) and Internet
Traffic Management software to corporate enterprise and managed service
provider networks.
