Rather than reinvent the wheel, however, the IT security vendor is creating an infrastructure to allow its partners to provide cloud based management security services using its Web Appliance and Email Appliance platform.

Previously deployed at the edge of company networks, these devices support inbound / outbound content scanning, compliancy checks, inbound threat protection and integrated data loss prevention.

According to Clearswift, under the cloud based security services, all of these features can be managed from a single policy management console, so allowing for performance and efficiency savings when compared to competitive solutions.

The company has been effectively piloting its cloud based approach to IT security with a Portuguese telecoms company, ONI Communications, since early September.

ONI, one of Portugal's telcos, has been allowing users to choose email security and / or web security facilities in a variety of flavours, with an advanced option allowing customers to define their own policies on their own virtual management appliance.

The gameplan, Clearswift said, is to offer similar levels of virtual security appliance services via a number of worldwide partners, including telcos, cellcos and systems integrators.

Jesper Fredricksen, the firm's vice president of global sales, said that Clearswift decided that the best way to deliver its security solutions via the cloud is through selected partners.

"Every customer has a different definition of what being secure is and Clearswift enables them to customise their security solution to achieve it", he said.

"The one size fits all approach to security that is offered by the large cloud factories would have required a compromise that we were not prepared to make", he added.