Credit Guides And Credit Services

Wisconsin Telcos Offer New Internet Security Solutions

Credit Pacific Service Union By Kristin V. Johnson • 02/04/04 Madison, Wis. The recent onslaught of e-mail viruses, overabundant spam and Internet security concerns has increased the need for computer user protection. In light of this, TDS Telecom and Norlight Telecommunications, both Wisconsin companies, recently began offering new computer security technologies to their customers.

According to the ePrivacy Group, spam cost U.S. corporations $8.9 billion dollars in 2002 through lost productivity, and is growing in volume by 18 percent every month. In addition, the FBI/CSIs Computer Crime and Security survey reported that organizations experienced financial losses of over $27 million dollars in 2003 due to viruses.

In response to these Web-based threats, TDS Telecom has recently adopted California-based NetScreen Technology Inc.s network security solutions and intrusion detection and prevention (IDP) systems to secure its network and protect critical customer data.

TDS previously used a multi-OS software-based firewall solution which relied upon a third-party solution to provide high availability (HA) capabilities. TDS replaced its previous network security products with NetScreens hardware-based, purpose-built integrated firewall and virtual private network (VPN) security appliances and systems as well as NetScreens IDP products because of upgrade complexities, performance and scalability limitations and customer data protection concerns.

To provide firewall protection of TDS Telecoms critical data resources, NetScreen-500 systems, purpose-built, hardware-based devices that integrate firewall, VPN and traffic management functionality, are installed in HA mode. Two NetScreen-208 and four NetScreen-204 appliances are deployed in active/passive mode and provide additional layers of protection. NetScreen-204 appliances also are being used to secure a virtual messaging application combining text messaging, fax and voicemail.

Two NetScreen-IDP 500 systems, which provide up to 500 Mbps throughput and operate in-line to accurately detect and drop malicious traffic in real-time before it reaches its victim, are deployed in active/passive mode at TDS headquarters.

Norlight Telecommunications, a Brookfield-based company that offers Internet and e-mail protection as well as integrated data solutions for businesses, announced today their new Mail Guardian service. The new service will allow customers to identify spam and protect against their accounts against e-mail-propagated viruses.

Norlights Mail Guardian is designed to help customers avoid these and other problems. With Mail Guardians spam identification features, customers can set their own parameters for identifying and tagging spam e-mail. In addition, Mail Guardian facilitates the quarantine of viruses before they reach a customers network.

All e-mail messages pass through Norlights Mail Guardian servers. If a virus is detected, Norlights Mail Guardian quarantines the message and sends a notification to the sender and receiver. If no virus is detected, Norlights Mail Guardian simply forwards the message to the customers e-mail server for normal delivery.

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Kristin V. Johnson is a Madison-based writer. She can be reached at kristin@wistechnology.com.

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