By Fred Touchette
Sept. 16, 2010
By now everyone is aware of spam and computer viruses, but not everyone is aware of the ways it can impact business. Spam and malware account for roughly 95 percent of all Internet traffic. It is delivered by huge networks of compromised computers known as botnets. Some botnets are made up of millions of computers and are capable of sending upwards of 30 billion pieces of spam and malware each day. Combine that with the fact that there are many botnets in operation every day, and the picture becomes clear.
According to several studies, spam costs U.S. businesses more than $71 billion annually (or roughly $712 per employee) in lost productivity. The simple fact of the matter is that spam consumes more employee time by requiring recipients to sort through the good from the bad. The same studies also show that an individual can spend up to 16 seconds reading and deleting each spam message received.
Suffice it to say, it greatly impedes productivity for employees who dig through 100 e-mails per day in order to retrieve five legitimate e-mails. According to this formula, if employees went through the above-mentioned number of spam messages each day, then each employee would be wasting 25 minutes per day on spam. And, it doesn’t stop there.
Businesses today spend time and money storing all e-mail traffic, including spam. When e-mail servers are kept on site, more equipment is necessary to deal with the sheer volume of this nuisance. One may think that an anti-spam service or appliance can help alleviate the issue. In some cases, it can reach as far as the end user is concerned, however, businesses still need some place to quarantine mail. (This is due to the fact that when the inevitable false positive rolls around businesses want to avoid permanently deleting e-mail.)
In recent months, spam campaigns have fine tuned the art of social engineering. These campaigns are designed to trick even the savviest of computer users into falling for scams. In other words, we’re no longer dealing with the predictable Canadian Pharmacy spam message. Instead, we must navigate through cleverly-designed messages meant to steal information and money from recipients. These messages are quite malicious. Once someone falls for the ploy, a malicious payload is installed onto the computer, often without user detection or knowledge.
Some malware authors cast a wide net, sending out as many malicious e-mails as possible. Whereas, others target specific individuals or business owners with a highly customized e-mail campaign. In either instance, seemingly innocent messages can ultimately cost a business its financial livelihood.
Spam is not only a nuisance, but also wastes businesses’ time and money. Malware also poses a risk due to the very nature of the campaigns. That’s why it is very important to mitigate your risk of exposure.
An increasing number of companies are turning to hosted solutions as an alternative to managing applications on their own servers and to save network bandwidth. Today, there are a number of reputable organizations that deliver security services that together form a reliable, secure, scalable and inexpensive computing platform “in the cloud.” Aside from being a cost-effective solution, many organizations find that these solutions are stress-free. Perhaps you, too, will find cloud options a viable solution for the spam blues.
Fred Touchette joined AppRiver in February 2007 as a senior security analyst. In this role, Touchette is primarily responsible for evaluating security controls and identifying potential risks. He provides advice, research support, project management services and information security expertise to assist in designing security solutions for new and existing applications. He can be reached at ftouchette@appriver.com.