Spam Still on Rapid Rise Representing Nearly 93 Percent of All Email; Companies Without Proper Protection Could Face Email Meltdown
Postini, the global leader in on-demand communications security, compliance and productivity solutions for email, instant messaging and the web, today announced that the recent spam explosion, which Postini reported in November, continues to grow at unprecedented levels.
Spam now represents nearly 93 percent of all email -- the highest level ever recorded by Postini -- further driving the need for businesses to keep their email secure and productive. This unprecedented wave of spam is expected to be accompanied in the new year by expanded compliance initiatives across all forms of electronic communication, strict regulations requiring messages to be secured and major new threats posed by Web 2.0 and globalization.
In November, Postini stopped a record 22 billion spam messages before they reached the 36,000 businesses using its services worldwide, preventing the wasted consumption of an unprecedented 86.5 terabytes of network and processing capacity. Postini now blocks approximately 12 spam messages for every valid Internet email. Over the past 12 months, Postini saw the number of spam messages grow by 147 percent, up 73 percent in the last three months alone. Due to explosive growth in the use of images and documents in spam messages, the total size of spam flowing through Postini's data centers grew by an unprecedented 334 percent since November 2005.
Each day in November, Postini saw more than one million unique Internet addresses participate in spam and virus attacks. Spammers also deployed broad and sophisticated viruses designed to add to their massive networks of hijacked personal computers called "bot-nets" to generate even more spam. The warezov / stration worm, which harvests email addresses and turns infected personal computers into spam-spewing zombies was particularly active in November.
"Because spammers are hijacking personal computers and stealing bandwidth to send an unlimited number of spam messages at virtually no cost, businesses can face an escalating series of expenses to ensure their email remains a viable and productive tool," said Daniel Druker, executive vice president of marketing at Postini. "Only on-demand services like Postini are designed to insulate companies from both the security and economic impact of spam, viruses, phishing and other attacks by blocking these threats on the Internet before they reach corporate networks."
Highlights from This Year
The volume and sophistication of email spam attacks in 2006 underscored how spammers are increasing the severity of their attacks on corporate networks. Image spam and office document spam made up as much as 45 percent of all junk messages in the fourth quarter, up from less than five percent in 2005. Postini saw a dramatic surge of 160 percent in instant messaging (IM) attacks in just one month, with new IM threats emerging throughout the year. Postini also saw a significant jump in directory harvest attacks, which attempt to steal email addresses from corporate servers by brute force, up 30 percent in one month alone, coupled with increased activity around the world wherever personal computers are concentrated, particularly in Korea, Brazil and China.
Postini's Top Five 2007 Communications Security and Compliance Predictions
As we move into 2007, the continued growth in level and new types of spam attacks along with growing business concerns over communications compliance, security and productivity usher in a new era of predictions from Postini.
-- Email will be under unprecedented attack in 2007, so stopping spam and keeping email productive will be a front burner issue for business executives. Companies without state-of-the-art protection from spam, viruses, phishing and other attacks will be in danger of losing the use of their email systems as viable business tools.
-- 2007 will be an explosive year for communications compliance initiatives. Email, instant messages and web content such as blogs are all legally discoverable documents that must be retained and produced on demand. Government, industry and legal mandates such as the newly enacted federal rules for civil procedure and the Graham-Leach Bliley Act will likely cause many businesses to re-think how they store, archive, discover and produce electronic communications.
-- Companies will face a variety of government and industry requirements to secure electronic communications with their clients and business partners to protect privacy and confidential information. As such, Postini expects that 2007 will see an uptake in the use of encryption designed to ensure messages are protected from eavesdropping, theft and tampering. Protection of private consumer information will also become more regulated and businesses will want to take steps to ensure they comply with this mandate.
-- Globalization, the growth of high-speed networks and the limited scope of international law enforcement will drive an escalated threat environment for all forms of electronic communication in 2007. More personal computers will be deployed and connected to always-on, high-speed networks, enabling bot-nets to grow dramatically. The international and distributed nature of criminal attacks that span multiple country borders make legal enforcement difficult. Money will remain the primary motivation for spammers, and attacks will continue to become more sophisticated.
-- Web 2.0 is already driving the web to become a two-way communications medium just like email and instant messaging. Blogs, podcasts, community sites and chat forums are allowing employees to communicate in new and productive ways, but today these communications are unmanaged and unprotected, leading to considerable business risk. In 2007, companies will need to ensure the security and compliance of their web 2.0 initiatives just like any other channel of communications.
November Viruses
In November, Postini blocked 37 million viruses, representing 0.5 percent of email scanned.
The top five viruses for November were:
Virus Name Quantity Blocked
warezov / stration / stration.gen 12,488,779
netsky 5,874,174
mytob 2,527,788
mime 2,402,366
mydoom 1,497,950
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