A little more than a year after MessageLabs, a cloud based spam and malware protection service, was acquired by Symantec and became Symantec Hosted Services, I had a chance to talk to someone from Symantec about the progress they have made and what's to be expected in the fight against organized cyber attacks.

Using intelligence gathered from the MessageLabs global network, Symantec has been able to improve their monitoring and response to the latest outbreaks and attacks in both enterprise and consumer offerings. In addition, they are leveraging their synergies to enhance their product pipeline in the near future, bring the best features from cloud-based and on-premise implementations (some of which we hope to see available for qualified nonprofits and libraries at TechSoup.)

Much has been made about the dichotomy between signature versus heuristics-based scanning, and Symantec is now able to "funnel" their analysis using both techniques for more active prevention and detection. While the RSA Conference has always been an annual exercise in paranoia and intrigue, I am glad that companies have kept up their defense, sometimes leading the offense, against the new threats that emerge everyday. And hopefully, these tools will become more and more available to protecting nonprofits and libraries as well.

In addition to being a donating partner, Symantec has funded efforts by TechSoup for internal capacity building and content development for the global social benefit sector.

Photo: chotda