Symantec introduced Symantec Mail Security 8300 Series Virtual Edition, a complete virtual appliance version of the award-winning messaging security appliance. Operating in VMware Server and ESX environments, Virtual Edition helps reduce costs and save time by giving users the ability to instantly adjust spam and virus filtering capacity without having to add or configure the physical infrastructure.

"Spam volumes fluctuate day-to-day, but overall they're on the rise. Symantec's January 2008 State of Spam report showed that spam surged to new heights as 2007 ended, accounting for 75 percent of all email sent," said Art Gilliland, Vice President of Product Management for Symantec. "Symantec Mail Security 8300 Virtual Edition gives users the power to instantly boost messaging security capacity whenever they need to."

The Virtual Edition's centralized control console allows users to instantly increase or decrease messaging scanning capacity across existing servers and appliances. Users can also automatically synchronize configurations and reporting across systems, allowing them to better and more easily measure system efficacy and meet industry compliance standards and regulatory mandates. The Symantec Mail Security 8300 Series Virtual Edition improves the efficiency of the messaging infrastructure by scanning and removing unsolicited messages from network and mailbox servers. The Symantec Mail Security 8300 engine delivers greater than 97 percent effectiveness, and is the only solution in the industry that combines email and instant messaging scanning and filtering capabilities in a single product.

"Symantec Mail Security Virtual Edition takes aim at many companies' biggest messaging security challenge, which is how to keep up with growing messaging and spam volumes while keeping costs down," said Chris Christiansen, Program Vice President for IDC's Security Products and Services group. "Symantec's virtual appliance option gives customers the choice of quickly and incrementally scaling their messaging security infrastructure while taking advantage of the resource utilization benefits of virtualization."

Symantec Mail Security Virtual Edition also enables faster setup and installation, making it easier than ever to test and evaluate the solution before deploying in a production email environment. In just minutes, a complete version of Virtual Edition can be downloaded, unlocked with a licensing key and deployed in a virtualization environment.

Award-winning Technology Backed by Symantec's Global Intelligence Network
Symantec Mail Security 8300 was recently named to InfoWorld magazine's annual list of "Top Technology Products for 2008" in the security category. The magazine noted the product's "superior anti-spam and anti-malware capabilities, strong enterprise-class features, excellent management and reporting tools, and a very polished, easy-to-use administrative interface." They also noted its easy set up and low price compared to other products tested.

All Symantec Mail Security 8300 solutions are backed and supported by Symantec's Global Intelligence Network, which updates the solutions to track for the latest spam and security threats. This world leading consists of more than 150 million antivirus sensors, 2 million decoy email addresses, 40,000 intrusion and firewall sensors and 4,300 monitored and managed security systems worldwide.