Review of ISP

I've argued for several years that ISPs should be doing more to create secure environments for their customers and or users. So I recently approached some major security companies and asked them to imagine that I'm a small-size ISP interested in providing security services for my users, such as antivirus, spam filtering, perhaps even some intrusion detection or firewalling services. What would they have to offer me?

The most interesting fact I uncovered through this research is that there are a lot more ISPs than I thought providing at least the basics, by which I mean antivirus scanning of e-mail. Quite a few broadband systems offer Yahoo!, which has e-mail virus scanning and decent spam filtering. I've run into a number of other, smaller ISPs such as my own that do e-mail virus scanning. My own ISP uses Authentium's Command Software products and resources.

At the same time, the other big national ISPs seem more reluctant to add these services, perhaps because of cost considerations. Earthlink has the excellent Brightmail-based spam filtering. AOL also doesn't offer it, but their AOL for Broadband service does include a personal firewall and enhanced spam protection.

There are two basic approaches an ISP could take, much as there are two approaches an enterprise could take: implement the security products as part of their own infrastructure, or outsource them.

With this in mind, there's no surprise that Trend Micro provides mostly the same enterprise network security tools to ISPs that it offers to enterprises to protect their networks. The core of their offering is InterScan Messaging Security Suite (IMSS), perhaps the top gateway-level security product.

Trend Micro also has a separate antispam filtering product called Spam Prevention Service (SPS) that works with IMSS. I recently looked at both for a comparative first-look review that will appear soon in PC Magazine.