Webroot® Research Finding: Rapidly Growing Email Security Threats

Webroot, a leading provider of security solutions for the consumer, enterprise and SME markets, today released its latest research report, “State of Internet Security: Protecting Business Email.” The report reveals the significant impact that rapidly growing email security threats, in size and volume, are having on businesses worldwide and underscores the need for a multi-layered approach to Internet security.

“The battle against spam is an on-going struggle for many organisations with spammers continuing to present a serious and costly threat to most businesses. In 2008,

we estimate there will be over 42,000 spam emails for every single business email account, or about 116 per day. And, because spammers are working at beating conventional filters with images and attachments, the size of spam has grown 60 percent since 2004,” said Mike Irwin, COO, Webroot. “The size and volume of these spam attacks is largely due to the partial success of current filtering defenses that now make spamming success a numbers game. It’s clear why first-generation defenses such as appliances and server-based software are struggling to keep up.”

Along with the rapid growth in spam, there is a similarly rapid growth in malware. Industry research shows that malware jumped from about 50,000 variants in 2004 to 5.5 million in 2007. Webroot research found that spam has become a significant vector of attack for deploying these new malware variants. But, while companies are seeing an increased malware threat to their email, they are still using it to gather and exchange vital customer and employee information such as credit card numbers and other confidential financial data. About one out of five businesses that responded to the survey experienced a threat to sensitive or confidential online information last year underscoring the growing need for securing and storing business email.