The Anti-Virus genre of protection has grown to include Internet content filtering. Do to the proliferation of SPAM and other unwanted content available on the Internet, many Anti-Virus vendors have developed gateway products that combine Anti-virus and Content filtering technologies to provide the most comprehensive protection.

Enterprise-wide virus protection/content filtering is now a core business requirement due to the increasing frequency of rapidly spreading, destructive viruses and the availability of unwanted web content. This requirement stems from both the perspective of system stability and user productivity to a legal perspective of the consequences of allowing unwanted content to enter the workplace. This protection at the firewall and gateway alone does not provide sufficient coverage. A combination of Anti-Virus and Content filtering protection is needed at key Tiers of every computing environment.