London, UK, 22 November 2000 - GFI, a leading developer of email content checking & anti-virus gateway software, today officially launched Mail essentials for Exchange 2000. Mail essentials can protect Exchange server from all kinds of email-borne threats, such as viruses, dangerous attachments, email attacks, spam and offensive content. This is the first available content checking and anti-virus gateway to offer native integration with Microsoft Exchange 2000.

Natively developed for Exchange 2000, Mail essentials 2000 uses the new API of Exchange Server 2000 and integrates directly with its email engine, yielding greater efficiency, speed and ease of installation and maintenance.

In addition, Mail essentials 2000 has a number of new features, including a rules-based interface that allows the network administrator to set up an unlimited number of content checking rules (for example, automatically delete .exe files, or quarantine .zip files) and apply them to groups of users and/or individual users.

"Mail essentials for Exchange 2000 is a must-have as it includes exclusive new features that greatly enhance Exchange Server security as well as resulting in higher performance," declared Nick Galea, GFI director and CEO.

"With the launch of Exchange 2000, GFI is prepared to provide a valuable component to customers implementing a reliable messaging solution," said Stan Sorensen, group product manager, Server Applications at Microsoft. "GFI is focused on enhancing the reliability and security of customers' Exchange 2000 messaging and collaboration infrastructure."

Included in Mail essentials 2000 is the unique capability of automatically removing Word macros and HTML mail scripts. This protects users from current and future email viruses, as well as from email attacks, that is, one-off viruses designed to break into a network. Mail essentials can also block emails and attachments containing VB script (such as the LoveLetter virus), Windows Scripting, and Java scripts at email server level.

Apart from scanning for email threats, Mail essentials also offers key email features such as the addition of a disclaimer to each outgoing email, email use reports, archiving of all email, server-based PGP encryption, an anti-spam module, POP3 downloader, and server-based auto replies.

More information can be found at http://www.gfi.com/me/index.html. The full version of Mail essentials is available from $350.