Analysis of the results from five independent testing organizations shows no single anti-virus engine is effective across the spectrum of formats employed by most organizations

London, UK, 1 August 2002 - GFI today released a white paper analyzing the results of research by five anti-virus testing laboratories. The white paper, "One Virus Engine is Not Enough", shows that no single product catches a comprehensive range of email viruses and malware within a variety of compressed and uncompressed file formats. A more secure approach must employ multiple anti-virus engines to cover a broader spectrum of threats.

The five impartial anti-virus testing laboratories (ICSA Labs, West Coast Labs, Virus Bulletin, AV-Test.org, and Virus TestCenter) looked at the leading anti-virus engines - namely, those developed by Trend Micro, Symantec (Norton), McAfee, Norman, and SOFTWIN - for their overall virus detection rate, their ability to scan through compressed and embedded files, and their coverage of non-virus malware. Each product showed strengths in different areas, meaning that combining the capabilities of two or more products would let organizations make up for deficiencies in any single product.

"Many organizations don't deploy multiple scanning engines," GFI CEO Nick Galea says, "because they don't want to pay twice for two overlapping sets of tools. A more cost-effective alternative is to deploy a single product that uses multiple scanning engines for checking email content and attachments while providing email intrusion detection and defense."

GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP is the first product that provides integrated support for multiple virus engines, including McAfee VirusScan, Norman Virus Control, and SOFTWIN BitDefender. More information about GFI MailSecurity for Exchange/SMTP and a free evaluation version is available at http://www.gfi.com/mailsecurity.

The white paper "One Virus Engine is Not Enough", which contains a detailed analysis of the research organizations' results, can be found online at http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/why-one-virus-engine-is-not-enough.pdf.