A laptop containing personal information on a bunch of current and former MCI employees was recently stolen. The employee carrying the information left the laptop in a car parked in a garage. Nice.

Hey, all you dummies out there! Crap gets stolen all the time out of cars sitting in parking garages. You never heard this before? Well now you have. So leaving a laptop (an expensive item) in a car is nothing short of sheer and utter stupidity. The fact that the laptop was loaded with personnel data is just icing on the cake.

Maybe MCI has been doing a lot of hiring out of Berkeley.

MCI has upgraded their managed email services for business to include anti-spam and anti-virus enhancements, as well content control measures for both inbound and outbound traffic. This is likely a response to Symantec’s recent jump into the managed email space, and Spamroll will be looking for reviews from the “outside world” on both.

Meanwhile..

The addition of content control is an interesting one; something we are seeing a lot more of in the corporate realm. MCI’s enhancement is based on the MessageLabs Image Composition Analysis (ICA) technology, which uses artificial intelligence to scan the subject, body and attachments of email for pre-programmed key words. Its purpose is to prevent inappropriate, malicious and/or confidential subject matter from permeating the network.

See MCI Delivers Four-Way Protection With Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus Solution For Businesses from Rednova, for additional details.

Karen Schwartz of eWeek was kind enough to set my confusion over the Verizon/MCI deal straight (see Verizon Makes Good Move with MCI Purchase).

I did not know that MCI was so strong in the government contracts arena, but that makes total sense. One, they have a big presence in DC, which means they get plenty of cocktail time with the politicos. Two, they are most well known for massive fraud and executives enriching themselves with shareholders’ money, which understandably makes politicians eager to join forces with them.

Nice.

The eWeek article did point out that MCI’s billing system is garbage, while Verizon’s is superb. So I guess I am on target with the notion that the combined customer base will see some upfront pain as end-user support is integrated. And big customers will likely see no pain, and great gain, much as I previously suggested.

Unlike Karen, I have no crystal ball, so I will not make any predictions on which/what merger will happen next.

Click here for my previous comments on this matter.