Spam continues to threaten the email productivity and data security of businesses worldwide. Spam is now seen as a huge time waster; at worst it can compromise an online banking connection or result in a business network being used as a repository for alien files or graphics.

People are shocked when they find out a spammer can use online banking details and other private business and personal communications through installing software that can read keystrokes.

Brett Roberts, platform strategy manager for Microsoft New Zealand, says worst-case scenarios are surprisingly common. "The worrying thing is the apathy. The security technologies are not expensive, it's just people aren't implementing them."

Globally, a report from research firm Ferris Research puts the business cost of spam for this year, which includes management time and lost user productivity, at US$50 billion.

Richi Jennings, one of the report's authors, says "global spam volume has jumped fivefold since 2003."

"Deploying competent spam-filtering software makes good business sense," says Jennings.

The main advice given is to conduct user education and employee training. However, many employers say all the policies in the world won't stop some people from opening spam. Common traps include spam that looks like legitimate email; spam that addresses the employee by name - and spam opened by mistake.

Roberts says spammers have become masters of covert social engineering. "Most human beings love to please. So if you get an email with a subject line that says 'I love you' or 'You sent me this by mistake' chances are it will be opened."

Roberts says the most common way to combat these is to use anti-spam software.

"If you do that you will automatically improve your spam situation. A good option" says Roberts "is to using an internet service provider that filters spam before downloading email."

Unfortunately, while these measures will significantly reduce the spam a business encounters, legitimate emails can be knocked out along the way - a security versus productivity trade-off businesses need to consider.

This problem can be combated using ArmourPlate, which stops spam emails and places it in an individual user's Spam Box, which is housed on the ArmourPlate system. . After thirty days each email is deleted from the user's Spam Box. Each email user can view their own Spam Box via a Web browser. If the AP system finds an email that, whilst it has strong spam characteristics could also be legitimate it stores these emails in a separate Quarantine Box rather than deleting it. In these instances, an alert email will be sent to the user informing them of this.

Source: nzherald.co.nz

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