London, UK, 17 November 2000 - GFI, leading developer of email content checking & anti-virus gateway software, has issued a white paper warning that anti-virus software alone is not enough to safeguard today's organizations against the present and future onslaught of email viruses and attacks.

"Anti-virus vendors cannot update their signatures in time against the deadly viruses that are distributed worldwide via email in a matter of hours, such as the recent LoveLetter virus and its variants. This means that companies using a virus-scanning engine alone are not necessarily safeguarded when a new virus is released," states the incisive white paper.

"Anti-virus tools work reactively, letting all emails in and then trying to disable a virus. At this point, it may already be too late: once a virus has entered the system, it takes one quick click for an unwitting user to activate it. "

Describing the main types of email attacks, including email Trojans, buffer overflows and HTML viruses, the paper demonstrates how anti-virus software offers no protection at all against such attacks, which are often highly harmful one-off attacks secretly targeted at a specific organization.

The paper proposes a proactive approach as the solution. This involves content checking all inbound and outbound email at server level, before distribution to an organization's users. This way, all potentially harmful content is removed from an infected or dubious email, and only then is it forwarded to the user. The need for such a tool is highlighted in a section that demonstrates the ease with which devastating email viruses are created today.

A free copy of this new white paper, entitled "Why anti-virus software is not enough: The urgent need for server-based email content checking", may be downloaded from http://www.gfi.com/me/mespapers.htm.