transtec Supports Open Source Email Filtering at Southampton Uni

MailScanner Passes Enterprise Level Load Testing – Over One Million Emails a Day!

Banbury, May 21rst, 2003 – transtec, the European IT systems manufacturer, today announced its full support of the development and testing of Southampton University’s Open Source email security product, MailScanner. Using a transtec workgroup server [more product details?] loaned by the manufacturer, Southampton’s University’s Electronic and Computer Science department has now been able to load test its anti-virus and spam filtering product to its full capacity proving that it is robust enough for the large enterprise and can scale to scan over one million emails per day.

MailScanner, which was developed three years ago on a transtec workstation, has proliferated widely throughout the Linux community and now has 50 million users worldwide on over 20,000 sites. With a growing number of universities and Government organisations throughout the world using the product, it was vital that the product developers could thoroughly test the scalability of MailScanner and provide assurances about its performance. "As an educational establishment we did not have the necessary funds to purchase the computing equipment powerful enough to test MailScanner to its full potential," explained Julian Field, the creator of MailScanner and Teaching Systems Manager for Southampton University’s Department of Electronics and Computer Science. "transtec has been our key supplier of PCs and servers for the last three years and this product loan was invaluable in confirming MailScanner’s viability for use in large organisations." The development of MailScanner was initially prompted when Southampton University decided to review the market for an email security solution. Rather than buy an expensive commercial product, Julian Field decided to build a product internally based on Linux. The University has now been using MailScanner for over two years to filter the email traffic of 100,000 messages per day. This has saved Southampton University up to £70,000 per year in commercial anti-virus software alone. "Education is a key sector for transtec and Southampton University has been a valued customer for many years," commented Syd Cochrane, Country Manager UK & Ireland for transtec. "We recognise the contribution that open source solutions deliver in financially constrained educational establishments and are delighted to be able to support the ongoing development of MailScanner." About MailScanner www.MailScanner.info

MailScanner is a highly respected open source e-mail security system, with more users than AOL and Hotmail combined. It processes 500 million e-mail messages every day, removing 2 million viruses and identifying 75 million spam messages. MailScanner is used at 20,000 sites around the world protecting top government departments, commercial corporations and educational institutions. It is becoming a standard feature of many ISP's as virus protection and spam filtering are now essential requirements for most users.

MailScanner scans all e-mail for viruses, spam and attacks against security vulnerabilities. It is not tied to any particular virus scanner, but can be used with any combination of 14 different virus scanners, allowing sites to choose the "best of breed" virus scanner. Being open source, site administrators can audit and verify the integrity of the system. Its role is a major part in the security of a network, and so it must act as a trusted service. The only way to achieve the required level of trust is to be open source, an approach the commercial suppliers are not willing to take. MailScanner has been developed in a world-leading Electronics and Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, and is distributed for *FREE* under the GNU Public Licence.