I can’t believe we’re already one month in to the new year! It has been a busy January for the Mail & Web Security business at Symantec, as we plan for a full slate of product releases in the coming months. We have releases planned for all three of our Brightmail products, our web gateway solution, and our groupware products planned in 2011. We also have follow-on releases planned for our exciting new Next Generation Network Protection platform for service providers.
The threat landscape continues to evolve in dynamic and unexpected ways. We saw a remarkable drop in spam levels right after Christmas when some major botnets stopped sending out spam for a few weeks. The botnets did not go away, however, and we’ve seen spam bounce back in recent weeks. Check out www.symantec.com/brightmail/iqservices to see a clear illustration of this drop and recover, as well as a number of recent blog postings on threats. Don’t forget our monthly State of Spam & Phishing Report, which is posted to www.symantec.com/spam. And don’t forget our more general blog on the threat landscape from the Symantec Security Response team, posted here on Connect at https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/symantec-blogs/sr.
Stay tuned for some exciting announcements about our portfolio in the coming months. If there any questions you would like us to tackle on this blog, please drop us a note in the comments below – we look forward to continuing the dialogue!
On behalf of the entire mail and web security product team at Symantec, I wanted to wish you all a very Happy New Year – we may be a bit late for the traditional New Year holiday, but we are just in time for the Chinese New Year – gong hay fat choy!
Welcome to the new Mail & Web Security Blog! Brightmail isn’t going away, but we wanted to expand our coverage to include news about our complete email and web security portfolio, including the Brightmail products (Brightmail Gateway, Brightmail Message Filter, and Brightmail Traffic Shaper), the Mail Security products (Mail Security for Microsoft Exchange and Mail Security for Domino), and Symantec Web Gateway.
In addition, Symantec’s messaging and web security products are core components of the Symantec Protection Suites.
Stay tuned for more updates, including an expanded cast of authors as we grow our coverage across a broader slice of the Symantec portfolio.
I can’t quite believe it’s September already, this year is flying by at a crazy pace.
This means that the Symantec Vision conference in EMEA has come around quickly too.
This year, we are at the CCIB in Barcelona, Spain, during the first week of October – Tuesday 5th through Thursday 7th.
Amongst the many, many sessions over the 3 day conference, there are a number of Mail & Web security sessions that you shouldn’t miss (not least because I’m co-presenting them 
), so in no particular order.
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Best Practices for Email Security.
- Anatomy of a Web Attack.
- Hands On Lab – Best Practices for installing and Configuring Symantec Brightmail Gateway.
- Hands On Lab – Best Practices for installing and Configuring Symantec Web Gateway.
- Deploying Symantec Protection Suite: Architecture and Best Practices.
Other interesting sessions in the messaging and web security realm:
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The State of Spam
- Cost of Email Security – Calculating your risks
- Protecting against Botnets
- Best Practices for installing and configuring Symantec Mail Security for Exchange
- Running Security Operations with Symantec Protection Center
If you are joining us at EMEA Vision this year, what are you looking forward to most?
Be sure to let me know if you are coming along, there are going to be plenty of opportunities to talk to our product specialists, engineers, decision makers and of course to network with your peers.
//ian
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a really keen advocate of bringing our customer base closer to our product development process.
2 years ago, I started running Customer Advisory Boards for our customers in EMEA. These annual or bi-annual events were a chance for customers to come together and help us prioritise future development work by discussing their experience and insight into messaging security.
In general, these were really successful and the fruits of those sessions are just coming to light now with last years Brightmail Gateway 8.0 release and the very-soon-to-be-release Brightmail Gateway 9.0.
But, what about our customers that don’t have the budget to travel to another city and participate?
This is more and more common in this economic climate. Travel budget is often the first belt to be tightened.
Well, this month I’m delighted to kick off the first Messaging & Web Security Technical Advisory Webcast.
Sounds interesting, what are they?
The Technical Advisory Webcasts are regular events, initially covering Symantec Brightmail Gateway and Symantec Web Gateway.
Presented via Webcast and tele-conference, you can expect to hear the following kind of information:
- General product updates
- Insight into future roadmap planning
- Technical Deep Dives
- Best Practices
- Ask Us Anything Q & A
I’m keen to make sure we provide information that is interesting and useful to you, our customers. So, if you have any specific topics you would like to see covered and discussed, please do let me know.
As I mentioned above, we are very close to shipping Symantec Brightmail Gateway 9.0 and this first webcast will introduce this major release.
How do I sign up?
Head over to the Security “Groups” page (https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/security/g…) and sign up to the “Symantec Customer Advisory Program – Enterprise Security” group.
Be sure to complete your profile as complete as possible and add a comment that you want to register for the Technical Advisory Webcasts.
If you have any problems, feel free to contact me either here on Connect or at ian_mcshane@symantec.com
Cheers!
//ian
As well as meeting up with as many customers as possible, the Gateway Security PM Team (which comprises Brightmail gateway and the new-ish Symantec Web Gateway) like to hold Customer Advisory Boards.
We hold these every six months or so and …