Security vendor Barracuda Networks is targeting small businesses and organisations with under 50 users with its new Barracuda Spam Firewall 100.

"There was a time when small businesses could rely on alternative solutions to spam protection, including desktop software, email server plug-ins or even no protection, because they just were not targeted as often as medium and large enterprises," said Stephen Pao, vice president of product management at Barracuda.

"However, botnets have changed the spam landscape and now any business, no matter its size, requires a layer of spam protection in front of the email server.

"Spam and virus protection at the gateway is becoming a vital necessity for even the smallest business and we are confident that the Barracuda Spam Firewall 100, with its market disruptive pricing, will be the perfect solution for this market."

The Firewall 100 features denial-of-service and security protection, rate control, IP analysis, sender authentication, recipient verification, virus protection, policy, fingerprint analysis, intent analysis, image analysis, Bayesian analysis and a spam rules scoring engine.

In addition, Firewall 100 features tools designed to prevent image spam, including multi-pass optical character recognition and automated fingerprint generation techniques.

Predictive Sender Profiling claims a spam accuracy rating exceeding 95 per cent out of the box. The device is priced at £848 with no per-user licensing fees.