"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 on Friday 27 February 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. Many 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
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.