McAfee - Spam to Grow 20% in March 2009

According to the March Spam report by antivirus firm McAfee, spam levels are predicted to rise 20% in March 2009, while loss of productivity for an average company is estimated at £130,000 per year.

McAfee also states that companies with at least 1,000 employees are likely to bear on average expense of $182,500 in combating spam during 2009. According to the vendor, the loss of annual productivity for these enterprises is averaged at $40,000 (£29,000) for every 100 messages of the aggregate volume of e-mail, which is spam.

However, these statistics do not take into account the expense of recording and storing spam, consumption of bandwidth, or any possible cleaning up on corporate computers in case the spam carries malicious links or malware.

Moreover, companies' cost with respect to spam is actually more than what they think. It impacts the basic business processes and can result in cyber attacks against organizations. Thus, specialists state that it is getting increasingly important for companies to defend themselves against the spam attacks.

Meanwhile, spammers are using correct e-mail addresses that have expanded their targets with a decline in the total 'bounce back' e-mails. Moreover, spam outbreaks are exploiting "partitioning" so that their effectiveness could be increased and the security devices that identify them could be defeated.

According to Mike Smart, EMEA Product Marketing Manager at McAfee, organizations have a tendency to deploy anti-spam filters and proceed for the next deployment without examination the existing one, as reported by ComputerWeekly on March 9, 2009.

Smart further said many fail to understand that spam actually is not diminishing and there are still costs associated with storage and loss of productivity. All messages that the spam filters do not block are stored on the company mailboxes and consumes sufficient storage space, he explained.

Further, for an insufficiently aggressive spam filter that catches 95% of spam rather than 99%, the 4% difference could be very costly as it affects the bottom line of the company.

Meanwhile, although legislatures and business leaders have pledged to eradicate spam, the threat persists. Accordingly, the security specialists said that spam and the ensuing lost productivity for businesses needed particular attention.

Related article: McAfee Alerts Windows about Accessibility Hole in Vista

» SPAMfighter News - 3/14/2009