Corporate Sector Vulnerable to Scam, Spam & Security Threats, Says Google

Google's annual report has confirmed that spam attacks creating a big problem to corporate businesses that associated with online operations and causing trouble to IT staff.

On March 6, 2008, Google released a white paper on emerging trends in corporate electronic communication systems and revealed that spammers are posing the biggest problem for it, which is getting worse.

According to the Google report, Postini Annual Google Communications Intelligence Report 2008, spam amount per Internet user increased by 57% in 2007 as compared to 2006, indicating that each unsecured user received 36,000 spam messages in 2007 than 23,000 in 2006, as reported by Information Week on March 10, 2008.

The report also throws light that putting restriction on spam and other kind of malware is the job of government, legal authorities, and the tech industry. However, healthcare, retail and financial organizations are more interested on complying with government rules, according to an online survey of 575 company executives including Chief Executive Officers, Chief Technical Officers, and Chief Information Officers.

Moreover, the report highlights that among all company executives and professionals surveyed, 53% held IT department of the company responsible for network security and compliance. Just 18% professionals acknowledge that system security, accountability and compliances rest upon them as well.

Moreover, the statistics of the report hints that the number of spam attacks is expected to get balanced out, according to the Google prediction. But the worrisome factor is that attackers are resorting to new, complex, and perilous techniques for conducting attacks.

Google also said that in future, businesses will have to confront new spamming technologies to identify different kinds of malicious content and to save the sensitive information. Social engineering techniques are the latest modes spammers employing to trick users to follow the action that divulge their personal information, as reported by Information Week on March 10, 2008.

Scott Montgomery, a renowned security analyst in the security community, called 2007 a ridiculous year for spam on March 11, 2008. He also said that spam attacks are cheap and quite successful. They will continue to remain like this until cost increases. Moreover, he completely discarded the idea of providing training to employees to fight against such threats and instead, emphasized that enterprises should remove employee access.

Related article: Corporate End Users Disdainful to IT Security

» SPAMfighter News - 3/15/2008