Spam still a challenge for companies

Spam remains a popular tactic of cyber criminals as businesses continue to struggle with it.

A survey of 400 US and UK businesses found that they weren't making the most of the most recent technology available to them to combat these threats and higher defend their networks, despite most (72 per cent within the US and 75 per cent within the UK) saying they receive an excessive amount of spam.

When asked concerning the volume of spam they were coping with, greater than 80 per cent of respondents in both countries reported no decrease over the former year.

The research by Kaspersky Lab found that while the quantity of spam is declining, mainly because of the takedown of major botnets in 2011, the collection of emails containing harmful attachments or links was at the increase.

It found that spam was reduced to around 80 per cent of total email traffic, while emails containing harmful attachments or links made up 3.8 per cent of traffic.

Also, the Symantec Intelligence Security Report for February revealed a one per cent fall in spam since January to at least one in 1.47 emails, following a seamless trend of world spam levels diminishing gradually because the latter portion of 2011.

Yet 70 per cent of Kaspersky's respondents rated their anti-spam solution as being either marginally effective or not effective in any respect; five per cent said they use no anti-spam solution, while 48 per cent of UK respondents depend upon the anti-spam capabilities of an anti-virus suite and 11 per cent on an anti-spam gateway appliance.

Meanwhile, despite almost 90 per cent of all respondents saying they often educate employees in regards to the risks of opening spam, 40 per cent of companies within the UK (and 44 per cent inside the US) said their networks were compromised due to staff opening malicious links or responding to information requests contained within spam.

Phil Bousfield, general manager of GFI Software's Infrastructure Business Unit, said: “This research shows that the spam problem is just not going away and, in reality, the delivery of malicious links and files makes it more dangerous than ever before.

“Businesses should respond by profiting from each of the latest spam-fighting technologies available to them. One of the best approach to stop spam is to employ a multi-layered defence that encompasses on-premise and cloud-based anti-spam solutions.”