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AT&T WorldNet plans to stop virus-infected e-mail at the Internet service provider crossroads by installing software to detect and delete unsafe attachments before they hit customer mailboxes.

WorldNet is testing the virus-blocking program and expects to implement it in early 2002. It will use e-mail filtering technology from Brightmail, a "mailwall" provider that works closely with Symantec, the security software firm.

"The best way to think about us is that Brightmail installs mailwalls, firewalls for e-mail systems," explains Gary Hermansen, Brightmail's chief executive officer. "We filter spam and viruses out of e-mail for large service providers, providing security and filtering of unwanted aspects of your e-mail."

Once implemented, the mailwall service will intercept e-mail that has malicious attachments. If you're the sender, it blocks the message and generates an automated message telling you that you have (perhaps unwittingly) e-mailed a virus. If you're the recipient, it will remove the virus and send you a message that describes its action.

Local Protection Urged

While the ISP service will stop e-mail viruses at the server, Hermansen says Internet users, especially those on broadband connections, should still use their own personal firewall programs to guard against other types of attacks.

AT&T WorldNet is teaming with Brightmail to thwart the spread of both spam and e-mail-borne viruses such as the malicious Sircam virus that has hit hundreds of thousands of e-mail users around the world.

"E-mail-borne threats can be just as detrimental as spam, completely halting e-mail activity and clogging gateways," says Ed Chatlos, vice president and general manager of AT&T WorldNet. The ISP is adding the protection tools because customers want the service, he says.

AT&T WorldNet already uses Brightmail's spam filter, he notes. Competing ISPs EarthLink and Microsoft also provide antispam services. Microsoft earlier this year contracted with Brightmail to implement antispam services on its MSN service.

Longtime Need

E-mail viruses such as Sircam and the fast-spreading Love Letter have proliferated like dot-com tombstones in the past year. What has taken the ISPs so long to offer this service?

Performance issues were exacerbated by the time and technology it takes to look for and remove damaging attachments from large numbers of e-mails, AT&T WorldNet says.

"That technology and capability wasn't available until right now," Hermansen says. "If you look at other server solutions that are available today, they only detect. We have the ability to clean and resubmit, and we are really the only ones who are able to perform at the level that we do."

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