Postini predicts more spam headaches for 2007

Over 90 percent of messages on the internet now spam, says messaging security vendor

Messaging security specialist Postini has warned that firms without state-of-the-art protection from messaging threats and those which try to deal with the problem in-house risk being swamped by spam, as levels continue to rise into 2007.

Nearly 93 percent of messages on the internet are spam, and the last twelve months has seen a rise of 147 percent, 73 percent since September alone, according to the firm's executive vice president of marketing, Dan Druker.

With the proliferation of high speed networks the number of spam-perpetuating bot nets is likely to increase next year, with the globalised, distributed nature of attacks making law enforcement difficult, he added.

Image-based spam will also cause firms continued problems, as many struggle to cope with processing and scanning these larger file sizes.

"Companies not keeping up to date with their protection and those trying to do it on their own risk losing email as a viable business tool," warned Druker. "It will become a CEO level issue again because it's beginning to impact the productivity of businesses."

Postini also predicts that as web 2.0 initiatives such as blogs and podcasts become more popular, firms will have to ensure the security and compliance of these channels is as stringent as other communications.

"The web is becoming a two-way channel for communication – and while podcasts, blogs and chat forums can be wonderful productivity tools, they are largely unregulated," said Druker. "But businesses will be required to treat them as seriously as corporate documents."