Car giant to use application service provider Mail.com in wake of
Love Bug attack
Antony Savvas
Ford is outsourcing the management of its e-mail traffic after
being severely hit by last week's Love Bug e-mail virus.
Ford, the world's second biggest car manufacturer after General
Motors, is to use the MailZone e-mail firewall package from
Internet messaging firm Mail.com, to screen all incoming and outgoing
e-mail generated by its 170,000 corporate e-mail boxes
worldwide.
Ford ran MailZone as part of an emergency procedure on the day
the Love Bug struck. The car giant had been considering the system
and decided to adopt it and scan every single attachment using the
system after fears that the virus was rapidly mutating. Ford was
concerned that it was being sent in different formats which the
existing corporate system could not handle.
Mail.com spokesman Brian Hannan, speaking at the NetEvents
symposium prior to last week's Networld+Interop in Las Vegas, told
Computer Weekly: "On the day the bug struck they suddenly
got religion and decided to hand over control of all e-mail traffic
to us.
"After the Love Bug arrived, we found a solution at Ford in 20
minutes and saved their system from further damage."
The solution sees Mail.com use Sophos-based anti-virus software
to block affected attachments at the firewall, and either forward
them to the addressees who have "attachment rights" after scanning
them, or blocking them completely if that addressee is not
allocated attachment rights.
Hannan claims users wanting to download updated patches during
the Love Bug attack from their anti-virus software companies Web
sites, were unable to gain access to most sites because of the
clamour for protection.
In addition, many staff who received the Love Bug attachment
could not be stopped from opening the file and worsening the
problem for their corporate network. The outsourcing of e-mail and
attachment control to an application service provider like
Mail.com, also ensures that updated versions of anti-virus software
are actually installed.
Many employees dis-enable their anti-virus software updates on
their machines, or simply do not complete the necessary re-boot of
their PC after the update is supposedly loaded, meaning protection
is not complete.
This slackness is often blamed on the amount of time a PC takes
to start-up when equipped with multiple applications, including
anti-virus software. But Mail.com says its solution delivers
updated patches in four seconds, and the user has no way of
dis-enabling the system.
Keeping the enemy away