Nokia, Trend Micro Unveil Partnership, New Appliance

The appliance, called the Nokia Message Protector SC6600, will scan inbound and outbound e-mail to protect networks from malicious code, viruses, leakage of proprietary data and spam, said Dan MacDonald, vice president of product management and marketing at Nokia Internet Communications, based here.

The device focuses on SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) traffic because most of the threats to corporate networks come via e-mail, said Kevin Murray, senior product marketing manager at Trend Micro, an antivirus vendor based in Cupertino, Calif.

"Eighty-seven percent of all threats are through the SMTP gateway," he said.

General availability of the Nokia Message Protector is scheduled for February, MacDonald said. The product will target medium to large enterprises with 1,000 or more employees.

Nokia's alliance with Trend Micro builds on Nokia's best-of-breed security system approach, MacDonald said. Nokia already offers firewall/VPN appliances through a partnership with Check Point Software Technologies.

Gregory Flatt, president of Flat Earth Networking, a security solution provider based in Nashville, Tenn., said he sees a lot of opportunities with the Message Protector.

"The antivirus market is always a good, viable market, but this is the first appliance we have a lot of confidence in, based on the performance of Nokia hardware and the robustness of Trend Micro's antivirus engine," he said. "We're very excited about it."

Solution providers will have Nokia as a single point of contact for licensing, service and support for the Message Protector, MacDonald said.

Pricing information will be released in the next couple of months, but the basic hardware and software plus the management interface is expected to carry a U.S. list price of $16,000, he said.

Murray said future plans call for Trend Micro to work with Nokia on developing HTTP, FTP and instant messaging security products.