I WANT MORE SPAM! (Said no one, ever)

Who has ever wished for more unsolicited junk email? Spam is not only an annoyance, it wastes your workers’ time, clogs your network, and slows your servers down if you aren’t prepared for the deluge of junk emails, and one misplaced click could bring your systems down.

Phishing websites, malware scripts, and executable virus files are all methods used by cyber criminals to damage your reputation and steal from your company. Businesses deal with the constant threat from spam and when the botnets get through to your inbox it costs time and money to deal with the attack and the consequences associated with leaked confidential client or staff information and corrupted data.

Symantec’s Internet Vulnerability Threat Report: Volume 18 stated, “Last year’s data made it clear that any business, no matter its size, was a potential target for attackers. This was not a fluke. In 2012, 50 percent of all targeted attacks were aimed at businesses with fewer than 2,500 employees. In fact, the largest growth area for targeted attacks in 2012 was businesses with fewer than 250 employees; 31 percent of all attacks targeted them.” Furthermore, “The volume of attacks against SMBs increased threefold, compared with 2011, resulting in its percentage almost doubling from 18 percent to 31 percent.”

This begs the question, why? Why are phishers, spammers, and email based virus attackers targeting small businesses? When Jesse James was asked, “Why do you rob banks?,” he answered without a pause, “Because that is where the money is”. Well transpose that into the modern day and this discussion and I would say that the answer is “Because that is where the defenses are down”. As a service provider we have been astounded to find many firms with well firewalled networks that are virtually defenseless in the area of email.

The report goes on to show that the most targeted companies by industry are in the Manufacturing (24% of attacks), Finance, Insurance & Real Estate (19% of attacks), Services – Non-traditional (17% of attacks) categories.

Symantec’s analysis shows that spam email decreased from 2011 to 2012, but that, “At 69 percent of all email, it still represents a significant amount of unwanted messages.”

Symantec predicts that, “As email spam rates continue to decline, we see the same social engineering techniques that have been used in email spam campaigns increasingly being adopted and being promoted through social networking channels.”

Spammers, phishers, and hackers aren’t going to quit, but they will become more sophisticated. Email will continue to serve as an open avenue for malicious threats and many efforts with the aim to obtain confidential information for financial gain.

Matt Cutts, currently head of Google’s web spam team, shares some statistics concerning web messages sent to their webmasters in a WebProNews Blog article. “At this point we do send hundreds of thousands of messages each month,” says Cutts. “Out of the hundreds of thousands of messages that we sent over that time period, roughly 90% of those were for what we call ‘black hat’,” says Cutts. “That’s pure egregious spam (clear cut), so anybody sufficiently tech savvy would probably be able to recognize that it’s spam. It’s the stuff that you think of as traditional junk that you just don’t want to show up in your results because it is very clearly spam.”

In a 5 day span of time, Swift Systems’ spam filtration system, Swift Purify, blocked and quarantined over 206,000 spam messages, 361 of which contained a virus or malware. Swift Purify is a hosted solution and that makes it simple for companies to manage their spam headaches. While the obvious spam messages are simply discarded, a daily email is sent from the Swift Purify system to each user so they can decide which questionable messages they may want to release from quarantine and they can also review and manage blocked messages from an easy-to-use dashboard. A hosted solution is also a great way to save bandwidth on your network and to ensure data redundancy.

To avoid bombardment by junk email, you need a spam and email based attack elimination solution along with other anti-spam measures like employee education, preventative policies, and data loss prevention measures. Along with a network firewall and timely system updates, a hosted email filtration solution will keep your internal network protected.

Are you a target of aggressive spam or cyber-attacks? Do you need network security advice?

Call us today at 301.682.5100 or 877.SWIFT.S.I (877.794.3874) or email an Account Executive to discuss solutions.

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