ScanSafe was a privately held company backed by investors Benchmark Capital and Scale Venture Partners,[3] until its 2009 acquisition by Cisco Systems.

Co-founded in 1999 by brothers Eldar and Roy Tuvey,[5] its services block malware and secure the use of the Web and messaging.

[6] ScanSafe has offices in London, England and San Francisco, California and maintains alliance partnerships with Google, AT&T, Sprint, Kaspersky, Telus, NEC, Orange Business Services, Integralis, SoftScan, TopNordic, Viatel, Ancoris, and FVC.

MessageLabs introduced a competing in-house product titled Web Security Service Version 2, resulting in a court judgment brought about by ScanSafe which required MessageLabs to notify all prospective clients that the Version 2 service is not based on ScanSafe technology.

[13] In October 2009, ScanSafe discontinued Scandoo, a free service that provided advance warning for security risks and offensive content in search engine results.