The government is deploying a managed antivirus service for the
Government Secure Intranet (GSI) after admitting in parliament that
one in every 250 e-mails it receives contains a virus.
A £1m deal has been signed with UK-based e-mail security company,
MessageLabs to protect government e-mail systems from mass mailing
viruses.
The GSI provides the secure network infrastructure for all
government departments.
MessageLabs will deliver its SkyScan AV managed antivirus service
through its partner Cable and Wireless, which provides the GSI
infrastructure.
SkyScan AV uses a patented artificial intelligence program to scan
e-mail, without the need for signatures, before passing them on to
the government network, MessageLabs said.
The program works by watching for similarities between messages,
and blocking messages when it sees a large number that are the
same.
"SkyScan AV uses predictive programming called heuristics, which
looks for existing similarities, evidence of payloads and areas of
known conflict, but it doesn't read for content," MessageLabs
said.
The system also scans e-mail for pornographic images and "spam" and
will not weed out electronic petitions and mass mailing of letters
of protest, the company said.
In the first two months of this year the virus checking service on
the GSI stopped more than 22,700 viruses.