Network Associates acquires Deersoft

MUMBAI: Network Associates has announced its decision to acquire anti-spam application company, Deersoft. This take-over is the first in a series of investments Network Associates is making in spam and content filtering technologies.

Under the terms of the deal, Network Associates has acquired technologies associated with Deersoft's consumer and enterprise anti-spam products for an undisclosed amount and would assume all support obligations for Deersoft customers.

The technology will be delivered at the gateway, email server and desktop for enterprise customers. The first product, McAfee SpamKiller(TM) Enterprise, will be delivered in the second quarter as a desktop solution.

Also in the second quarter, ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO), McAfee's enterprise policy manager would be updated to manage SpamKiller Enterprise. With this enhancement, ePO(TM) will be able to manage spam, McAfee and competitors' anti-virus products as well as personal firewalls, gateway and email protection from a single scalable tool.

In the second half of 2003, the technology will be integrated into the McAfee WebShield and GroupShield products to provide protection for Internet gateways and email servers.

"With Deersoft, we have acquired extensions to the leading open source 'black list' application and we will add applications that detect spammers even before they appear on black lists," said Vishwajeet Deshmukh, Country Manager, SAARC, Network Associates.

The Deersoft anti-spam products filter email to defend organizations from unwanted messages, conducting more than 750 tests and heuristic scans to analyze messages and identify spam. Once a message has been identified as spam, the technology determines the appropriate action, such as rejecting the message or logging it for further review.