Sir [-] Spam e-mail messages are a nuisance. Not only can they be offensive and expensive [-] at present costing UK companies over £1.3 billion per annum [-] but they can also drain network resources, taking up to 50% of available bandwidth. Furthermore, the detrimental effect on productivity when mail has to be sorted manually exacerbates the problem still further. In short, it is hard to overstate the threat of spam to the successful operation of UK businesses.

What, though, can we do about it? Unfortunately, for those organisations who think they have the problem in hand, buying and then deploying a spam filter isn't going to be sufficient to dealt with this issue. Businesses need to determine and manage enforceable spam policies.

Most organisations are only ever worried about receiving spam, and happily deploy deploy devices that will check incoming mail. What they fail to do is audit their networks thoroughly to ensure there are no loopholes that would allow spam to originate from their servers. Everybody is so wrapped up with making sure no untoward data creeps in that they forget it's just as important to check what stuff is going out.

To first combat and then eradicate spam we need a global agreement or framework to verify the source of every piece of e-mail and its legitimacy. 85%-90% of e-mail making its way around the cyberworld today is spam. We need an open standard and co-operation from the major players in the industry in order to clamp down on the small amount of rogue e-mail servers that are causing this major disruption.

Scott Nursten, Managing Director, s2s

Source

SMT