McAfee Aims to Rid SMBs of Virus and Spam

If you rely on technology to run your small business, you know how easily a virus can destroy your data &#151 and potentially years of hard work. You also know that spam isn’t just annoying; it can carry hidden viruses, negatively impact your employees’ productivity and affect your bottom line.

Most small business owners would rather focus their time and money on growing their business rather than devoting those precious resources to finding and maintaining the right technology in order to protect it.

You might consider letting an expert take over that responsibility. McAfee has the credentials, and the program, to do just that: McAfee Managed Mail Protection.

Pristine E-mail, Canned Spam
McAfee today announced that it has taken its successful Virus Screen ASaP e-mail screening product and added anti-spam and content filtering capabilities to create Managed Mail Protection.

Once you sign up, your company’s in-coming and out-going mail gets routed to McAfee for cleansing and filtering &#151 it detects and eliminates spam, inappropriate content and viruses are detected before they ever reach your network.

McAfee does the heavy lifting, but you, the customer, retain control of what is or isn’t considered inappropriate material or sites. The McAfee ASaP Web site acts as your central management tool &#151 log in and change default settings, configure spam settings and view statistical reports on your company’s e-mail traffic.

The service is aimed at SMBs that have their own mail domain (SMTP protocol only &#151 no POP-3) a minimum of 25 mailboxes and a maximum of 1000. According to Lillian Wai, a product-marketing manager at McAfee, ” Managed Mail Protection provides a great, low-cost alternative for SMBs that lack the IT staff or knowledge to protect their e-mail from viruses and spam.”

Another benefit from outsourcing your e-mail and spam protection: you’ll never have to worry about updating and maintaining anti-virus definitions. “McAfee adds the newest virus signatures every week,” says Wai. “That includes all viral threats and updated black and white lists, too.”

Pricing and Availability
Available in one- or two -year licenses, Managed Mail Protection’s list price is $2.61 per user per month. Customers can buy the entire bundle, but McAfee will also sell the virus and spam components separately depending on a business’s need.

The product is available starting today, September 13, through the channel (where VARS will no doubt add perks and lower the price). The company also plans to sell it on its Web site later in September.

Lauren Simonds is the managing editor at SmallBusinessComputing.com.