Organizations say spam is deadlier than worms or viruses

We have just completed a survey on spam and other messaging-related issues in which the majority of organizations polled named spam as a more serious problem than worms or viruses.  Here’s a summary of this and other findings:

* A full 70% of organizations find spam to be a ‘serious’ or ‘very serious’ problem, far worse than viruses or worms, which are a serious or very serious problem for 41% of organizations.  Part of the reason for the seriousness of the problem is that spam is an issue that many organizations are just beginning to deal with, while viruses have been dealt with for a much longer period and so the immediacy of addressing the problem has diminished.  Even the Blaster worm that was first discovered during the week preceding this survey was a serious or very serious problem for only one out of three organizations.

* The percentage of smaller organizations (up to 1,000 e-mail users) that have implemented an anti-spam solution held reasonably steady at about 58% in this survey compared to a survey we did a year earlier.  However, the deployment of anti-spam solutions at larger organizations has significantly increased, growing from just under 50% of organizations last year to more than 80% in the current survey.  This may be due to the fact that larger organizations tend to be slower about deploying new technology because of the longer evaluation process for new software and the difficulty of deploying a new solution to a large number of users.

* The survey also found that three out of four organizations block one or more e-mail attachment types, and that three out of five organizations block incoming e-mails based on size.  Larger organizations tend to be more restrictive than smaller organizations on both counts.

For highlights of the survey, please visit https://www.ostermanresearch.com/results/surveyresults_0803.htm