McAfee--Guarding Networks with Antivirus Appliance

By Michael Foley

(04/26/01, 02:48:43 PM EDT)

McAfee has released the WebShield e50 antivirus appliance to defend networks from malicious viruses. Using its advanced Outbreak Manager, content filtering, and heuristic scanning technology, the company has now packaged its antivirus software into a stand-alone appliance to protect networks. The appliance provides antivirus scanning and can plug into virtually any network.

The WebShield e50 appliance is an SMTP gateway virus scanner, scanning Internet traffic at the network perimeter without impacting other performance-critical systems such as firewalls or e-mail servers. The product enables administrators to remotely manage virus protection across the enterprise from one location, utilizing the Internet-based WebShield SMTP client. It also features automatic updating over the Internet.

The WebShield e50 appliance includes the McAfee Active Virus Defense scanning engine. This engine halts the latest forms of viruses and malicious code, including macro viruses, Internet e-mail, Trojan horses, worms, and hostile ActiveX and Java code.

The WebShield e50 appliance also includes McAfee's Outbreak Manager, the breakthrough antivirus technology that monitors Internet e-mail by looking for suspicious behavioral patterns and activities typical of virus outbreaks. With the enhanced content scanning capabilities of the WebShield e50 appliance, administrators are able to know exactly what is entering and leaving the network.

ViruLogic, a heuristic scanning technology, detects previously undiscovered viruses and cleans them before they can incur damage. Content scanning examines the subject line, message body, and file attachment names of e-mail content entering the network.