Lynnfield, MA - Sophos, a world leader in protecting
organizations against spam and viruses, conducted a poll of more
than 1,000 computer users at small- to medium-sized businesses
(SMBs)* regarding the issue of spam. The poll revealed that only 13
percent of workers believe that their employers should not be held
responsible for blocking offensive email from being delivered into
employees' inboxes. More than 50 percent of those polled, however,
felt that employers should take preventative measures to ensure
that spam containing violent, pornographic and other offensive
content is not delivered to the organization's staff.
In a separate poll* conducted in April 2004 of nearly 4,000
small- to medium-sized businesses, Sophos found that 80% of
companies identified spam as a cause of lost productivity, yet only
28% had an anti-spam
solution in place. Taken together, the two polls clearly show a
need for spam protection in the SMB market.
"Although many organizations today, regardless of size,
recognize the value of and actually deploy dependable spam
protection, our poll shows that only about a quarter of all SMBs
have anti-spam software in place," said Gregg Mastoras, senior
security analyst at Sophos, Inc. "Many modest sized businesses with
limited budgets may accept spam as a fact of life because they view
anti-virus and other security measures as far more critical. As
viruses and spam continue to converge, all organizations need to
re-examine their current gateway and even desktop security strategy
to address the evolving threats from all fronts."
Besides offending and distracting personnel, unfiltered spam
also wastes valuable time and network resources, resulting in a
significant loss of revenue for businesses. Sophos spam experts
estimate that unsolicited marketing emails account for more than 50
percent of all email traffic, and this figure is expected to
increase in the next year.
"Employers should also consider how they can increase protection
against liability exposure from inappropriate communications,"
continued Mastoras. "By setting up proactive internal controls for
ensuring compliance, companies would be able to define, configure,
monitor and enforce their message-handling policies easily. In
addition, implementing and enforcing a best practice policy
regarding email account usage can be an effective tool for
minimizing the amount of spam that end users receive. While having
such a policy should not be considered a complete solution, the
enforcement of such a policy can serve as a significant line of
defense against unwanted email."
In April, Sophos released its Small
Business Suite, which combines full protection against viruses,
spam and other email-borne security threats. Designed to minimize
the cost, management and maintenance of complete gateway
protection, the Sophos Small Business Suite automatically downloads
the latest virus and spam protection. By filtering email at the
Exchange or SMTP gateway, neither end-users nor administrators need
to deal with offensive email, and the network runs more efficiently
as it no longer has to process unwanted messages.
Find out how you can minimize spam.
* Conducted by New Business
* Sophos online survey, 3,731 respondents from small- to
medium-sized businesses, April 2004
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.