Only a small amount of spam reaches users' mailboxes,
but the threat it poses to corporate security and bandwidth costs
is growing because the absolute amount of spam is growing, says
anew study.
The European Network and
Information Security Agency (Enisa) said, "As only 6% of all
e-mail traffic actually reaches mailboxes, the public perceives the
situation to be under control. The reality is that spam is growing
in quantity, size and bandwidth, and remains a costly problem."
The Internet Society, said
1.32 billion people, 20% of the world population, now has internet
access, and broadband access is growing. Enisa noted that broadband
penetration in Europe is now 30%, double what it was a year ago. As
it spreads, threats such as spambots become more critical because
of the extra speed with which they can distribute malware.
E-mail providers and anti-virus firms have reported consistently
that spam represents around 80% of internet traffic. As internet
traffic increases, so does the number of spam messages.
Enisa asked 30 internet and e-mail service providers in 19
countries how they secure their services and limit spam and
unsolicited e-mails. Every provider filtered incoming traffic and
more than 90% filtered outgoing traffic, up 15% and 46%
respectively from a year ago. On average, providers used five
different spam filtering methods.
Almost every provider published contact details for the users to
report violations, up from 60%. "There are vast improvements in
training and/or awareness campaigns, guidance to subscribers and
free security software, " it said.
Last year, providers relied mainly on customer complaints to
detect spam now they are more proactive in monitoring spam traffic
peaks.
Although more providers processed spam reports, fewer received
notice when their clients received spam. Fewer providers analysed
where the spam came from.
"Spam is an international problem and different laws, time zones
and languages make co-operation difficult," Enisa said.
Enisa supports initiatives such as
SpotSpam which helps mitigate the
problem by acting as an intermediary.