Technology partnerships are key to delivering high quality, competitive products and services, and this is especially true in the information security industry. Expertise in a given area is developed over years at great expense, and it often makes more sense to acquire proven technology rather than try to build it. Such is the case with anti-virus, a critical component of Unified Threat Management solutions.

Kerio has been offering anti-virus as a component of its email and network security software for over 8 years. As we look to evolve our product strategy, we needed to also review our anti-virus technology relationship to ensure that the partner we work with will best complement our future direction. After serious consideration, Kerio has chosen Sophos as its new Anti-virus partner.

In the virus scanning business since 1992, Sophos has a strong technology portfolio and global business model that mirrors Kerio's own. Their scan engine offers extreme performance and includes the following technologies:

• genotype virus detection technology
• decision caching
• pattern matching
• emulation
• dynamic code analysis
• heuristics

The engine is now available in the latest beta version of Kerio Control 7, our new UTM product, and will also be added to the next version of our email collaboration product, Kerio Connect 7.1

Customers using our McAfee integrated products will automatically be migrated to the new Sophos engine when they install the new version of the product. Those customers that wish to continue using McAfee will be able to do so until the current term of their subscription expires, provided they do not upgrade their software.

We encourage evaluation of the beta and appreciate any feedback about the products and the change.

Try out Kerio Control 7 RC 3