Small companies face spam explosion

The amount of spam that is clogging up email servers is exploding, finds a survey.

The study of 400 SMEs found that in January 2006 only 64 per cent of emails sent to companies were identified as spam. This figure shot up to 85 per cent last December, with the trend set to continue upwards.

The survey also found that the number of compromised computers within corporate infrastructures increased from 15 per cent in January 2006 to almost 40 per cent in December 2006.

Although spam sent from these computers – which form part of a botnet – are normally stopped by email filters at the gateway, they still waste part of an organisation’s processing power in dealing with the problem. This is according to IT security company Vasco, who carried out the survey.

The research also found that there was a slight decline in the number of virus types circulating the Internet, falling from 111 in January 2006 to 95 in December. But the virus threat increased as the total email traffic of the 400 surveyed companies grew from approximately 6m emails in January to almost 20m in December 2006.

‘Taking the results of the survey into account, it is clear that any company active on the Internet needs to arm itself against possible online threats,’ said Jan Valcke, president and chief operating officer at Vasco. ‘Every company, regardless of their size and sector, is vulnerable and needs sizeable and flexible tools to protect their business.’