The MessageLabs Small Business Solutions provides email anti-virus, email anti-spam, web anti-virus, web anti-spyware plus URL filtering capabilities as a one-size-fits-all bundle. It’s the first time we have tried to differentiate our services according to the size of the company we are targeting, said Brian Czarny, VP Product Management.
The SMB sector is a market we believe to be underserved in terms of email and web security managed services said Czarny. He suggested that even where an organization has deployed its anti-virus or anti-spam systems in the shape of easy to use, easy to manage appliance form factor devices they will find they still need to be managed. Smaller businesses face the same threats as large enterprises yet have limited IT resources and budget, and a lack of depth in security expertise.
Czarny said that the SBS package uses the same anti-virus engine and the same service level agreements as are seen by enterprise level customers, but here the security features are offered as a combination of a la carte menu options. Against that, the $4.85 a month per-seat packaged security service should prove to be 20% to 25% cheaper than if a comparable set of managed services where delivered as a custom set.
MessageLabs said the SBS service is simple to set up and requires only minimal management, without the need for any software or hardware. Like other services operated by the company, SBS also includes predictive threat systems MessageLabs calls Skeptic, which take recent threat and reputation information from one service protocol, such as email, and applies that data to web traffic.
