Carriers as Pipe Cleaners

So I went on a bit of a tirade last week regarding phishing, making the point that carriers have a significant responsibility to provide some level of anti-spam/anti-phishing on their pipes. I'm glad to say I am not alone in that assessment and a carrier is finally willing to step up and offer some help, at least to small business.

Let me also clarify that I'm referring to business customers, as opposed to consumers. Both AOL and Earthlink (and I'm sure a bunch of others) offer security services to their consumer subscribers, and it's the right thing to do. But most carriers sock it to small business (I know because Security Incite is an SMB), and usually it's more cost effective (and secure) to buy the "consumer" version of many services.

Today the "new" AT&T (kind of makes me laugh from my telecom days) has announced a relationship with McAfee to provide MFE's anti-spam capabilities, free of charge, with a premium AT&T service called Unified Communications Service. This is a good thing for customers and for AT&T, who is now able to differentiate this service with value added security.

McAfee has an initiative called "Clean Pipes" to help service providers "build and deliver managed security services for their customers..." (their words, not mine). McAfee has been making inroads on the consumer side via ISP bundling (based on a survey done by my friend Walter Pritchard over at SG Cowen), and now they are extending this to small business. Again, it's the right thing to do, especially given the imminent entrance of Microsoft into the consumer and SMB AV space.

So, bandwidth is a commodity. In most cases, messaging services are a commodity. Users should hold out and take their money to the service providers that understand the importance of security as a core component of both bandwidth and messaging services.