Know your enemy!
Ten things every IT manager should know about email-borne threats.
- Email-borne threats are the work of organized crime Individuals and organizations in pursuit of financial gain, not geek stardom, are responsible for most email-borne threats
- No slow-down in sight The number of spam emails is predicted to reach 42 billion messages by 2008 - twice the number in 2004, with spam containing a constantly changing range of threats, scams and hoaxes.
- Spyware is a huge challenge One in every two Trojans - many sent through email - now contains spyware.
- Spammed email can infect networks worldwide in a matter of minutes At its peak, spammed email containing the Sober-Z worm - the most widespread threat in Sophos's January-June 2006 list - accounted for 1 in every 13 emails.
- Spammers carry on spamming because people reply Nearly 10% of respondents admitted to buying goods sold via spam, according to a recent Sophos web poll.
- Over 60% of all spam originates from hijacked computers Zombies - computers that have been silently hijacked by botnets - give unauthorized users the ability to use them to distribute spam from 'safe' locations.
- The amount of email infected with malware has reduced... Only one in every 91 of all emails in the first 6 months of 2006 was viral, compared with one in every 35 for the same period in 2005.
- ...but infected email has been replaced with more insidious targeted threats 22% of respondents said they received phishing spams more than five times a day, according to a recent Sophos web poll.
- Spam campaigns can last as little as 30 minutes before being subtly changed Fast response by security vendors means that spammers constantly tweak their campaigns to evade new defenses.
- The email gateway is the first line of defense for your corporate network You can stop viruses, spam and content security threats at the network edge and within internal email systems, with software, hardware or managed services.
