Cisco to launch email security services in the cloud

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 13 October 2009 12:54

IT Industry - Strategy

Cisco is set to launch in Australia a set of hosted and hybrid on premises/hosted email security services based on technology from its subsidiary, IronPort that is presently available in Australia only in appliances for installation on customer's premises.

Beyond this Cisco plans to expand these hosted services to we security and to integrate these with its VPN client software so that companies will be able to secure remote workers' access to corporate networks with IronPort email and web security technology in addition simple VPN access.

Tom Gillis - vice president and general manager Security Technology Business Unit in Cisco's Wireless & Security Technology Group - told iTWire "We launched this service in the states about three months ago and we will be turning it up in Australia fairly soon...In the next four weeks with a significant announcement in that regard...Technically it is available worldwide now but our data centre is in the US and we have not been marketing it in Australia."

Glen Welby, IronPort's sales manager for ANZ, added: "We already have a couple of local customers who are using the US service but the stomach for offshore data centre services in this country is not very strong."

Cisco announced the service in the US in March saying: "Cisco IronPort email security services are aimed at providing [businesses] them with complete choice and control over where their e-mail security is deployed and managed...The benefits of on-premise and cloud-based solutions are combined, as control of inbound traffic is enabled in the cloud, and outbound controls, such as data-loss prevention and encryption, can be handled on a customer's premise.

"Organisations can take advantage of the efficiencies of the cloud but maintain physical control of on-premise equipment for handling sensitive data. With a common management interface spanning both the hosted and on-premise equipment, the hybrid solution delivers unified centralised reporting, message tracking and quarantine."

Cisco at present offers only email security in the cloud, although IronPort appliances also provide Web access security. Gillis told iTWire "Our vision is that all our major security services will be offered premises based and in a hybrid cloud and premises form factor. The next offering would be web security."

Gillis - who describes his role as "trying to bring the level of excellence we have in IronPort [acquired by Cisco in June 2007] across the entire Cisco security portfolio" - added: "Things get really interesting when you think about the advanced security service we have around the dark web and our ability to read content when we start to tie these in with Cisco VPN client...That is starting to blur the line between security and remote access and create a new architecture for security going forward."

He said that Cisco would be making announcements in Australia around this in about a month's time.