The surge in spam and viruses makes it easy to forget that internal communications can prove as problematic as external messages. Entrust Inc., an identity- and access-management software company, revealed Thursday the availability of a Linux-based appliance to address E-mail content concerns, whether incoming, outgoing, or internal. The Entrust Entelligence Compliance Server brings E-mail into real-time regulatory and policy compliance, allowing administrators to deal with offensive language, spam, or the requirements of laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

"Clearly, there are threats from the outside, and people are annoyed by the amount of spam coming into the organization," says Leah MacMillan, VP of secure messaging at Entrust. "But there's also a great concern about the kind of information that's actually leaving an organization."

Some of the ways companies check E-mail for compliance, such as hiring people to review outbound E-mail, occur only after a violation has happened, she says. "We can capture E-mail as it leaves the organization and before a violation occurs, so you can take the appropriate action," she says.

That might include sending E-mail back for consideration or quarantining it until a privacy officer has reviewed it. Or it might mean automatically encrypting the message if the Compliance Server deems its contents sensitive.

"For example, if you're in the health-care industry and you're handling private health information," MacMillan says, "if you're accepting those messages, you also have to be concerned with the compliance issues associated with that."