Antispam software vendor SurfControl has released its first network gateway e-mail hardware appliance, called RiskFilter, into the Australian market.

The company has previously sold software-only products -- such as its flagship E-mailFilter -- which run on general server hardware.

SurfControl claims the new appliance uses advanced filtering techniques, including spam fingerprints, heuristics and lexical analysis, to eliminate e-mail threats while delivering acceptable e-mails to recipients. The device acts as its own mail transfer agent (MTA); supports end-user spam management, including white and black lists, and can be centrally managed via a secure Web interface.

SurfControl RiskFilter runs on a hardened Linux operating system.

"We took Linux, stripped the file systems and rebuilt it from the ground up," said SurfControl managing director Charles Heunemann.

He said this build provided RiskFilter with the raw processing power required to scan up to 10 million messages per day.

The RiskFilter appliance, which made its European and North American debut last October, is available now to Australian and New Zealand customers in four models, priced from $10,250 to $70,000.

SurfControl competes with anti-spam filter makers such as Symantec and MailFrontier, and with e-mail security appliance vendors including IronPort Systems and CipherTrust.