L-Soft and F-Secure protect millions of mailboxes

Up to 60 million LISTSERV® list subscriptions protected by F-Secure Anti-Virus



London, 29 October 2001 – L-Soft, creator of the industry's most widely used e-mail list management software, and F-Secure (HEX: FSC), a provider of managed security for enterprises, today announced an agreement to integrate F-Secure's Anti-Virus technology into L-Soft's LISTSERV® product line. The added functionality will make LISTSERV the industry's first e-mail list management software to provide critical virus protection for subscribers.

When integrated with LISTSERV, F-Secure Anti-Virus checks each e-mail attachment sent via mailing lists, providing protection from harmful computer viruses. If a virus is detected, LISTSERV will reject the propagation of the message containing the virus. L-Soft will offer this additional security free of charge to its Windows 2000 and Linux customers within their standard maintenance contracts.

Viruses such as last September's Nimda have taken advantage of the speed and prevalence of e-mail lists to infect tens of thousands of victims in a matter of hours. "We wanted to protect as many of the 60 million subscriptions stored on platforms supported by the anti-virus system as possible, and this meant giving the functionality away for free. In today's economy, anything that is not in the budget gets delayed, and we wanted quick adoption. We wanted virus writers to know that they will not succeed in changing the way people use e-mail. Mailing lists are and will remain an effective, time-saving communication tool," said Eric Thomas, L-Soft's CEO and founder.

F-Secure Anti-Virus is engineered for fast, automatic virus database updates - a key advantage in the e-mail virus protection market. In addition, it is the only anti-virus software with multiple scanning engines, reducing the risk to let harmful viruses through.

"We are proud to see the technical advantages of our products recognized by L-Soft and used to protect such a large user base. We are also pleased to note that security is being more and more integrated into applications and service offerings," said Risto Siilasmaa, President and CEO of F-Secure Corporation.

"Computer viruses are a major problem to all organisations who make significant use of the Internet," said Dr Chris Wooff, Head of General User Services, Computing Services Department, The University of Liverpool. "The University of Liverpool already makes use of a number of methods to minimise the risks of viruses. We are delighted that L-Soft is planning to incorporate anti-virus protection into its LISTSERV product. This will provide us with an important additional layer of protection."

LISTSERV, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, was the first e-mail list management software on the Internet and is still the most widely used today. L-Soft's LISTSERV software enables users to create and maintain e-mail lists and is currently used to manage more than 190,000 lists worldwide.

Press Photograph

Eric Thomas, CEO of L-Soft, and Tero Suomi, Director of Strategic Partnerships at F-Secure, look forward to anti-virus cooperation.


About L-Soft

L-Soft specialises in the development of products and services for professional e-mail communication management. Since 1994, L-Soft has pioneered the e-mail communication industry with LISTSERV®, the premier software for e-mail list management. L-Soft's technology is tailored for commercial usage, offering outstanding performance, reliability and scalability. Originally launched in 1986, LISTSERV® software will celebrate its 15th anniversary this year.

About F-Secure

F-Secure Corporation is a leading provider of centrally managed security for today's mobile, wireless enterprise. The company offers a full range of award-winning, integrated anti-virus, file encryption, distributed firewall and VPN solutions for workstations, servers, gateways and mobile devices. F-Secure products are uniquely suited for delivery of Security as a ServiceTM which provides invisible, reliable, always-on, and up-to-date security for the most widely distributed user base. Whether provided by corporate IT or delivered by service providers, F-Secure solutions extend policy-based security and instant alerts to all devices where information is created, stored or accessed. Founded in 1988, F-Secure Corporation is listed on the Helsinki Exchanges [HEX: FSC]. The company is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland with North American headquarters in San Jose, California, as well as offices worldwide. More information on F-Secure can be found at: http://www.fsecure.com

L-Soft UK Press Contact

Outi Tuomaala
+44 (0)203-7555117 or +46-8-50709911
https://www.lsoft.com/contact/econtact.asp?id=pressinfo



LISTSERV is a registered trademark licensed to L-Soft international, Inc.

See Guidelines for Proper Usage of the LISTSERV Trademark for more details.

All other trademarks, both marked and unmarked, are the property of their respective owners.


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