SEEMail Keeps Delivering

The government Secure Electronic Environment (SEE) Mail standard has proved a robust and effective tool for business continuity.

The Director of the State Services Commission's E-government Unit, Mr Laurence Millar, said SEEMail enables the secure exchange of information between government departments.

"It is a gateway consisting of an authenticating technology, firewalls, content filters and virus scanners, which together combine as an integrated secure environment that provides a wide range of protection.

"The recent flurry of malicious activity across the Internet, including instances of 'phishing,' 'spoofing' and virus attacks have had an adverse affect on many organizations. Those government agencies that have deployed the SEEMail standard have been able to filter much of this.

"By authenticating and encrypting agency communications, SEEMail stops 'spoofing' and eavesdropping and is a very cost effective way for agencies to safeguard their businesses processes, to ensure continuity and to deliver quality services to their customers," said Mr Millar.

Warwick Sullivan, Chief Technology Officer for the Ministry of Health, said, "in the course of a normal day we would process up to 70,000 emails, and approximately 2,000 of these would be viruses and another 2,000 would be Spam.

"If these emails were to penetrate our SEEMail gateway, they would be a serious impediment to our ability to conduct day-to-day business."

NZ Police reported similarly effective screening through their SEEMail gateway. A Police spokesperson says their average traffic was between 10,000 and 15,000 emails a day, with approximately 5,000 being viruses or Spam.

"However, during the recent peak of virus activity, we were handling about 40,000 emails a day, almost 30,000 of which were being stopped."

"Late last month, in one week we received 7,500 viruses in a three hour period. The SEEMail Standard guarantees security and, for us, security is continuity," the Police spokesperson said.

For more information about SEEMail, go to: http://www.e-government.govt.nz/see/

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