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With a slew of high profile botnet takedowns in the past year or so, some have argued that we\u2019d see a reduction in the amount of spam being slung around. Some have even published stories about how the number of spam e-mails being transferred have vastly declined, and have used historical numbers as a comparison to show that we are actually becoming spam-free. But the true metric \u2013 the only one that actually counts \u2013 is the effect that spam has on businesses.<\/p>\n
Businesses don\u2019t care if there are only ten billion spam e-mails today versus twenty billion a day this time last year. In fact, all it takes to do damage is one errant, malware-laden spam e-mail to ruin an IT department\u2019s month and put at risk the valuable information resources that companies work so hard to protect.<\/p>\n
If GFI Labs\u2019 latest report has anything to say about it (hint: it does), then spam represents a real and present danger to companies in the US and UK. More than just remaining<\/em> a threat to data security, however \u2013 that is, thinking it\u2019s just a status quo thing that will continue to be a thorn in our sides, nothing more and nothing less \u2013 companies are reporting some staggering and sobering numbers that may have you scrambling for your information security policy. And you might be well-advised to have a sit-down with the staff to discuss what spam\u2019s been doing for you \u2013 or to you \u2013 recently.<\/p>\n The report, published by GFI Labs and reported upon by several<\/a> media<\/a> outlets, has some pretty unnerving notes and overtones. GFI undertook the survey of businesses in the US and UK, and the results are fairly consistent between companies in both countries, with a few exceptions which we\u2019ll get to in a moment. The key headlines:<\/p>\n While there was only a marginal difference between US and UK companies, of note were the tactics companies on either side of the pond use to combat spam. In the US, 14% of companies reported that they rely on cloud-based anti-spam solutions, while only 8% of UK companies could say the same. It turns out that the UK prefers anti-spam gateway appliances (22%, compared to 11% in the US).<\/p>\n Most shocking, of course, and difficult to shake is the number of companies that reported having been breached by malware related to e-mail spam, a full half if you include the \u2018don\u2019t know\u2019 responses. It doesn\u2019t take a senior research scientist to glean that there\u2019s still a massive gap between understanding spam and the dangers it represents, and the effectiveness of the rest of us to combat the problem.<\/p>\n Yes, spam is declining, but the numbers are deceptive. This week, Kaspersky Labs reported that the volume of spam is indeed in decline, something we\u2019ve been reporting for months after the takedown of high-profile botnets like Kelihos and Rustock. Of note, however, is that malware attachments and malicious links are on the rise. While spam e-mail has seen a reduction to about 80%, the number of malicious e-mails made up about 3.8% of that traffic.<\/p>\n\n