25 Feb 2004
Sophos calls for collaboration against spam
"Doing nothing is not an option," says Sophos
Sophos, a world leader in protecting businesses against spam and
viruses, is calling on Australian businesses to support the
government's efforts to tackle spam through collaboration. NOIE
(National Office for the Information Economy) is holding a Spam Law
Implementation Forum this Friday in Sydney to drive forward exactly
the sort of collaborative activity which Sophos believes will help
to reduce the size of the problem. Sophos will present at this
forum on the topic of "Technical and Enforcement Measures".
Although there has been much interest in recent days over
Microsoft's announcement of its "caller ID" technology for
identifying "friendly" email, Sophos warns that technology alone
can tackle only part of the problem. "There is no technological
silver bullet," explains Paul Ducklin, Head of Technology, Asia
Pacific, at Sophos in Sydney. "We need a collaborative
multi-layered strategy which includes infrastructure, technology,
applications, users, legislators, law enforcement and the
judiciary. In short, we need you!"
Worthless emails are sapping our ability to use the internet.
Doing nothing about this is not an option. Ducklin lists some of
the simple things that IT personnel and businesses can do to
help:
- Don't do business with spammers! Listen to the Internet
Industry Association: "don't try, don't buy, don't reply".
- Don't configure your anti-virus software to reply when it spots
an email virus. Most viruses lie about where they came from, so
"notify sender" just produces one more unwanted message.
- Don't be a security bludger. If someone else has to point out
that your systems have been compromised, it's probably because you
are already peppering them with unwanted network traffic.
- Don't try to send the grooviest-looking emails in town. Fancy
HTML, email scripts and embedded images just make it harder for
humans and computers alike to judge whether a message is really
what it seems. Keep it simple!
- Don't put your head in the sand. Keep in touch with the
evolving industry codes on good email behaviour and put them to
work in your company.
Further reading
About Sophos
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.