Message management specialist Postini will today announce a new managed web filtering service to control content at the perimeter of the network, protecting firms from web-based attacks and helping them to comply with regulations and corporate policies.

The Web Content Manager service comes with web filtering technology from web security firm ScanSafe. It is a completely hosted service, meaning lower overheads and startup costs and higher availability, argued Postini's director of marketing Andrew Lockhart.

"For firms’ finance officers it's much simpler and makes sense to [use] services like this," said Lockhart. "It also makes sense to block [threats] at the earliest possible time – to have defence taking place outside the corporate firewall in a Postini datacentre."

Lockhart added that the service can help firms comply with regulations, which may require them to restrict or block access to web mail accounts, for example. "There is a lot of nasty stuff that can affect [IT systems] coming down through web browsing," he said. "And there are also compliance and policy enforcement aspects, because the web holds a great number of distractions for employees."