* Messaging security problems on the rise, with one exception
Here are some interesting statistics from leading messaging security firms that show that, with the possible exception of spam, things are getting worse from the perspective of messaging security.
* CipherTrust reports that an average of 157,000 new zombies are discovered every day and that one-fifth of these zombies are in China. If each new zombie is used to send only 20,000 messages each year, that means that just a year’s worth of newly discovered zombies will be responsible for more than a trillion spam messages every year.
https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/0421armyofzo.html
* MessageLabs reports that in March, 68.8% of the e-mail it scanned was spam, down from 83.1% in January; in July 2004, 94.5% of the e-mail the company scanned was spam.
* As of this writing, MX Logic reports that the infection rate for viruses and worms is 3.54%, or one message out of every 28 sent.
* On just April 20, FaceTime’s IMPact Center reported 11 new threats affecting MSN Messenger, IRC, Windows Messenger and chat programs.
* As I write this column, during the past 24 hours Postini reports it processed 235.6 million messages and 153.6 million invalid delivery attempts (from things like dictionary harvest attacks), meaning that 39.5% of message delivery attempts were not valid.
The level of effort needed to combat the threats against messaging systems and networks continues to ratchet up, soaking up more and more IT budget and manpower.
In addition to trying to keep up with just basic messaging security, IT functions are being asked to do even more in light of increased regulatory oversight from legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, such as provide secure messaging capabilities, additional archiving, outbound content scanning and the like.
I’d like to hear the perspective of those in IT who are charged with providing messaging security and more. Are things really getting worse from your perspective? Please drop me a line at mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com
