News - SEEMail
SEEMail Keeps Delivering
10 June 2004
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/
