Here’s a pretty bold move on MessageLabs’ behalf: taking out a $60 million loan strictly for research purposes. While they hope to gain leverage on the security market, it will definitely be beneficial for all of the consumers. More details on this below.

MessageLabs, one of a handful of smaller security vendors competing in a cut-throat market, has secured a $60 million loan that it will use to bolster its research and development efforts, the company said Thursday.

The private Gloucester, England, company will double its 10-person research team in Toronto by July, complementing its 80-person U.K. team, said Jos White, MessageLabs co-founder and chief marketing officer.

The two engineering teams will work on meshing MessageLabs services, which include e-mail, IM (instant message), and Web traffic filtering, White said. MessageLabs differs from other security vendors in that a client’s e-mail or IM traffic is diverted to one of the company’s datacenters where it is cleansed of malicious content. The service is sold on subscription.

Engineers will work to integrate the management of those services, such as setting policies to block certain attachments in e-mails, into a single portal, White said.

Read the rest of this HERE.

It’s good to see that MessageLabs is still figthing in the computer security realm. It seemed like just yesterday when you were hearing about MessageLabs all over the place, then all of a sudden it was like they have fallen off the face of the earth in terms of publicity. Let’s just hope that they will be able to stay afloat when it comes time to pay it all back.

Tags: Good on the Net