Press Release - For Immediate Release

IronPort Announces Next Generation Compliance Filters for Regulatory Compliance Enforcement

IronPort Solution Includes Award-Winning PostX HIPAA Lexicons; Helps Customers Accurately and Easily Secure Outbound Email and Prevent Loss or Exposure of Sensitive Information

SAN BRUNO, Calif. - May 16, 2006 -- IronPort® Systems Inc., the leader in gateway security, announced today the availability of its next generation compliance filters to enable customers to address HIPAA, GLB, and other regulatory compliance requirements. IronPort's easily deployed solution includes a set of pre-packaged compliance policies, making it simple for customers to defend their organizations against outbound content compliance violations while maintaining industry-leading levels of system performance and throughput. Developed in collaboration with IronPort's technology partner PostX, this solution incorporates the award-winning PostX HIPAA lexicons, which have earned the exclusive endorsement of the American Hospital Association (AHA). Check out www.ironport.com/compliance for additional details.

The IronPort Compliance Filters™ use a unique multi-category pattern-matching algorithm to significantly reduce false positives. For example, HIPAA does not require a message to be blocked simply because it contains a medical condition or drug code. However, if the message correlates this medical information to a particular individual, then there is enough evidence to block this message or take some other remedial action.

"IronPort's compliance filters helped us accurately identify sensitive information in emails," said Jim Helmbrecht, Web Services Manager at Rent-A-Center. "With just a few clicks on the IronPort Email Security Manager™ GUI, I was able to create a policy to encrypt these emails."

Complex Regulatory Requirements

Messaging managers tasked with enforcing an email compliance policy often come up against an ambiguous set of requirements concerning what they can and cannot do with email.

"Enterprises must understand and comply with a complex regulatory environment full of costly, unfunded mandates," said Tom Gillis, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for IronPort Systems. "HIPAA, for example, requires companies to have 'safeguards' to ensure the security of Protected Health Information (PHI). Email administrators are forced to create ad-hoc filters, without clear guidelines, to implement these safeguards."

Often, these filters rely on huge sensitive word lists related to medical conditions or financial transactions. Not only are such first generation solutions difficult to administer and manage, they also adversely impact timely communications because of the arduous nature of email content scanning. In many cases, customers need to install a separate system only for scanning outgoing messages for potential compliance violations.

Legacy Solutions Prone to Errors

Legacy solutions are also prone to a very high false positive rate, resulting in frequent administrative intervention. "First generation solutions for email compliance are where spam filtering solutions were three years ago," continued Gillis. "It is not uncommon for organizations today to see false positive rates of over 50 percent. IronPort's next generation filters represent a significant leap forward in the evolution of content filtering for email compliance."

IronPort's Compliance Filters - Simple and Effective

In addition to accurately identifying confidential information, the lightweight IronPort Compliance Filters scan emails very quickly, ensuring that there is no delay in email communications. The same IronPort appliance that handles outgoing email delivery can perform all email filtering operations.

IronPort's email security appliances integrate these critical features to offer customers a turnkey solution for email compliance:

  • Comprehensive Policy Management - Manage all content security policies using a single GUI dashboard.
  • Workflow Integration - Easily implement remediation policies with customizable notifications and role-based access for compliance quarantines.
  • Centralized Reporting and Logging - Generate reports for unprecedented mail flow visibility. Instantly track messages for compliance audits.
  • Email Encryption - High-performance TLS encryption for business partner communication. Integration with best-of-breed vendors like PostX and PGP for flexible deployment options.

About IronPort Systems

IronPort Systems is the leading gateway security provider for organizations ranging from small businesses to the Global 2000. The company has developed a family of security gateway appliances, including the IronPort C-Series email security appliance, and the IronPort S-Series Web Security Appliance. All IronPort application-specific security gateway appliances offer breakthrough performance, and utilize SenderBase®, the world's largest email and Web threat detection network and database. For more information on IronPort products and services, visit: http://www.ironport.com/.

Press / Analysts

If you are a reporter or analyst and want more information on IronPort Systems please contact:
David Oro at (415) 885-9898 or dto@theorogroup.com
Suzanne Matik at (831) 479-1888 or smatick@earthlink.com