McAfee to sell Postini e-mail security service

McAfee on Monday announced the availability of two hosted e-mail security services: the Secure Messaging Service for Small Businesses and the Secure Messaging Service for Enterprises. The announcement marks McAfee's entry into the enterprise hosted e-mail security arena; other players in this crowded market include MessageLabs and MX Logic. Companies can reroute their e-mail to be filtered by McAfee and Postini. Messages that contain spam or viruses are quarantined and the remaining mail is sent on to the recipient.

Both McAfee services are based on the hosted e-mail scanning product sold by Postini of Redwood City, Calif. The companies had an existing relationship: Postini uses McAfee's antivirus technology for its e-mail scanning service. McAfee of Santa Clara, Calif., last year introduced its McAfee Managed Mail Protection service for small businesses, and those customers will be migrated to the new service, McAfee said.