Aug 27, 2008 : MessageLabs Buys Fortium ICA

📅 August 27, 2008 - Integrated messaging and web security services provider MessageLabs (messagelabs.com) has acquired image composition analysis software company Fortium ICA (fortium-ica.com), which enables businesses to enforce acceptable use policies of email by identifying unwanted or offensive images before entering or leaving a corporate network.


According to MessageLabs' announcement Tuesday, MessageLab plans to use this acquisition to help strengthen its suite of Software as a Service solutions for email, Web and instant messaging security, data loss prevention and archiving.

London-based MessageLabs declined to disclose the terms of the acquisition.

Image control is a sophisticated enhancement to corporate content control, ensuring images including pornography do not enter or exit a corporate network.

Fortium ICA was a subsidiary of Fortium Technologies (fortiumtech.com) prior to the acquisition. Fortium Technologies will continue to its video copy control and fingerprint detection technology divisions. MessageLabs reports that Fortium ICA's image analysis technology had been previously deployed for use in MessageLabs Image Control service for several years.

"Recognizing the importance of image analysis technology, MessageLabs was an early investor in Fortium ICA, so we are delighted to now be able to bring this unique technology in house," MessageLabs chief financial officer Stephen Chandler said in a statement. "Fortium ICA's image technology is the most advanced in the market today and we're excited to have their team and technology as part of MessageLabs."

Earlier in August, MessageLabs released its monthly spam report for July. Its main finding was that spammers are using Google's hosted applications to host spam. Also, the number of new malicious websites blocked each day has increased by 91 percent between June and July.