For around half of British businesses the rising volumes of unsolicited emails or spam they receive is a growing concern and in some cases has become unacceptable, a survey suggests.
With 93 per cent of UK companies using email as an important business communications channel (compared with 80pc two years ago), any disruption or degradation of this service is a serious business issue. Yet, at the same time, the deployment of anti-spam tools is still not widespread. So found the 2004 Department of Trade and Industry’s biennial Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by a consortium led by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Full results are launched at InfoSecurity Europe in London, 27-29 April. Visit www.infosec.co.uk
Key findings
The survey of some 1,000 companies found: nearly all UK businesses receive spam although the volume varies; overall around half reported it representing a noticeable, significant
or large proportion of their incoming internet email, with the figure for larger companies slightly lower; some 17pc of companies reported that spam made up more than 50pc of emails received; but business is divided on the impact of spam – one in ten consider it a major issue, while a third don’t believe it is an issue at all; use of tools to filter out spam before it reaches the intended recipient is not widespread in British companies with just 20pc of businesses overall deploying this technology, although the figure for large businesses is more than double this (44pc); in the case of smaller companies, it is possible that cost or lack of awareness of filtering technology is a factor in the low adoption rate, while among businesses in general, the feeling may be that the technology is not yet sufficiently mature; however, it is also true that businesses do not consider spam as being among their highest risks and so it may well be that wider adoption of filtering will only happen when spam starts to have a greater direct impact on business; the survey suggests that media attention on spam is greater than its impact on business, although this is likely to change because 55pc of companies believe that spam volumes are rising, while
just one in ten see them falling; while some of those companies polled thought spam was an isolated problem, others suggested that the visibility of email addresses to the outside world was the root cause because the vast majority of spam was directed at these users; others believed that internet service providers
should do more to choke spam at its source or that a levy should be applied to each email sent to deter mass mailing. These findings are published in a fact sheet – ‘Spam’ – sponsored by Computer Associates.
What they say
Simon Perry, vice-president of security strategy for Computer
Associates, said: ‘Spam affects more than just productivity. It also has a dangerous side to it. Some can contain viruses or malicious active code. Without the adequate anti-virus protection, critical data can be compromised. Many companies now use anti-spam filtering solutions but these cannot protect against the associated risks alone. It is critical that anti-spam
solutions work together with firewalls and anti-virus tools to ensure that there are no obvious holes in a company’s defences."
