Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced that Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition and Symantec Mail Security 8200 Series were named among Information Security magazine's 2006 Products of the Year in the February 2006 edition of the publication.

The busy antispam marketplace has another new entrant: Los Altos, Calif.-based Barracuda Networks, which today unveiled a line of hardware appliances to fight spam and computer viruses.

We all have a policy to counter the threat of malicious virus threats and while they look good in the procedures manual, does the reality match your expectations? It's all well and good installing antivirus (AV) software on all our desktops and servers but how do we ensure they all carry the very latest detection engines and virus signature files?

Panda Software, leading antivirus developer, scoops all antivirus companies with another FIRST in the industry. Anticipating Microsoft's worldwide release of Windows Server 2003 on April 24, Panda Software announced the launch of Panda Antivirus for Windows Server 2003 to take advantage of all the technological innovations incorporated in the new Microsoft platform.

Fortinet security appliances run from the FG50, for small business, which cost around £500, through its enterprise-orientated product (e.g. FG400- around £6000) to what the company describes as carrier-class anti-virus firewalls.

Tumbleweed MailGate delivers the most robust, effective and easy to manage email security available. Through its unrivaled content filtering, anti-virus, anti-spam, and intelligent edge defense, MailGate protects any organization, large or small, against fast-moving virus outbreaks, botnets, spam, and denial-of-service attacks - eliminating up to 90 percent of email traffic before it enters your organization.

Ositis Software, Inc., a leading developer of security appliances and secure Internet sharing solutions for small to large-sized organizations, today introduced the AVStripper z2000. The z2000 is the latest addition to the eShield platform of network security applications.

IronPort--an appliance maker that offers security software bundles from a number of vendors--also announced new partnerships Monday, including an expanded four-year deal with Symantec. But one industry analyst predicts the relationship between IronPort and Symantec may be headed for the rocks in the long run.

Several years ago, Marcus Ranum, security industry luminary and inventor of the proxy firewall, began talking about the emergence of a "god box"?/font>a single appliance capable of handling all aspects of network security. "There's really very little benefit to having these things separate," says Ranum, who sees the various security technologies as a side effect of the fact that different companies had different objectives at a certain time for what they were going to build. The growing trend of security vendors continuing to acquire each other and integrate separate technologies into a single box has proved Ranum's prediction true.

Mail and security appliance vendor Barracuda Networks announced plans today to defend the open-source ClamAV antivirus program from dubious patent threats made by Trend Micro, a prominent security software company. Trend Micro claims that its US Patent 5,623,600 broadly covers the concept of server-based antivirus software on FTP and SMTP gateways.