Companies and analysts all agree that the web, email and instant messaging have a critical and growing place in business - but at the same time they are subject to increasing levels of attack and nuisance. However, a growing trend is the coordination of attacks across communications mechanisms. These multi-channel, "blended threats", are used to achieve a single goal: financial gain.

With increasing effectiveness of email filters and hightened user awareness of suspicious emails, hackers are turning to less well protected communications channels like instant messaging and the web. Using "Blended Threats" that deploy multiple techniques such as viruses, trojans, worms and spyware, the hacker attempts to take control and propagate their malware via the weak-points in business communications infrastructure. Using multiple communications vectors, these attacks increase their chance of success while reducing the probability of being detected.

While point solutions to plug security gaps can each deal with a specific vulnerability, they both lack coordination and can be expensive to acquire and manage. A coordinated approach is superior, since it ensures that defence is on a level playing field with attackers.

Postini's Communications Suite defends businesses from individual and blended threats across email, web and instant messaging channels. Policy is defined once for all services, ensuring that a combined front is presented to attackers.

As an On-Demand service, this defence ensures that attacks and unwanted materials such as spam and inappropriate web content are all blocked before they even reach your network. However, you still remain in full control with real-time administration tools that cover all aspects of the service.

• Combines IM, web and email security for seamless protection
• Superior performance, scalability & reliability
• Lower total cost of ownership
• Secure 24x7 global data centres with 99.999% availability
• Real-time processing - always on and always current

Click here to visit our Postini page for more information on the Communications Suite.