By Melanie Turek, Principal Research Analyst, Nemertes Research LLC

Two recent announcements by anti-virus vendors highlight the need for new approaches to fighting e-mail and e-mail-borne viruses, a top priority for IT executives according to Nemertes’ recent benchmark, “Secure Messaging for a Changing World.” The majority of IT executives complain about the time it takes for their anti-virus software to detect and alert them to a new virus outbreak; methods that can shrink that time are welcome.

The iSolation server from Avinti Inc. sits between the enterprise firewall, spam and virus filters, and the enterprise e-mail server, and moves every e-mail with an attachment to a virtual computer, where it opens and executes the attachment; if it behaves like a virus or a worm, the e-mail is quarantined.

Two weeks ago, IronPort announced its new Virus Outbreak Filters, which look for patterns of behavior in e-mail messages that suggest a group of messages may represent a virus attack. The system then alerts Symantec, its anti-virus partner, of the possible threat. (Avinti says it’s working on similar notifications).

The complete Impact Analysis is available to Nemertes clients. For more information, please contact Chris Zimmerman at christine@nemertes.com