Postini Annual Email Security Report Shows Smaller Companies Experienced 10 Times More Spam in 2004

Postini Annual Email Security Report Shows Smaller Companies Experienced 10 Times More Spam in 2004

Seminal Report on State of Email Shows Regulations, First Generation Solutions Ineffective in Stopping 3X Increase in Viruses, 80 Percent Spam Rates, Heavy DHA Attacks

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Postini, the industry's leading provider of email security and management for the enterprise, today announced the release of a landmark annual report on the state of email security that points to dramatic vulnerabilities for small businesses and certain vertical industries that are experiencing much heavier attacks than other types of companies. The findings also show that even as attention to the cost and prevention of spam reached a high point in 2004, threats to email systems grew worse as the incidence of spam remained at 75-80 percent of email, virus attacks grew threefold, and directory harvest attacks (DHAs) continued to plague corporate email servers.

Highlights of report findings for 2004 include:

-- Smaller companies such as those with 100 users or less received up to 10 times more spam per user than large businesses (10,000 users or more)

-- Certain industries, including Publishing, Advertising, Legal, and Real Estate, received more than 10 times the amount of spam per user per day than organizations in Banking, Financial, Manufacturing, Electronics, Food & Beverage, and Pharmaceuticals

-- The average company experienced 150 Directory Harvest Attacks per day, making this type of attack the least visible and most underreported threat in 2004

-- Virus infected emails tripled as a percentage of all email, encompassing 1.5 percent of all emails in 2004, up from 0.5 percent in 2003

-- As much as 1 percent of all spam is some variety of phishing, a particularly threatening act of sending email apparently from legitimate senders to trick users into revealing their passwords or confidential information

-- More than one third of all spam is sent by zombie networks that use innocent victims' computers as a conduit for delivering spam to others

"What we're seeing is a profound increase in the sophistication and incidence of tactics designed to fool conventional anti-spam filters," said Chris Smith, senior product marketing director at Postini. "Spammers are also finding smaller companies more susceptible to attack since they typically have fewer and less sophisticated defenses in place than larger enterprises."

The report reveals that DHA attacks are alarmingly widespread, with the average attack consisting of 250 invalid email deliveries attempts. The result is that the average company is plagued by almost 40,000 invalid delivery attempts per day.

In a look ahead, the Postini report predicts an intensified battle against spam that will continue to escalate as email threats evolve at a faster pace.

"Postini's predictions for 2005 are consistent with what we see ahead in the email security landscape," said Matt Cain, industry analyst with the Meta Group. "More sophisticated, phishing style attacks will proliferate as bulk spamming scams decrease in effectiveness. We see dynamic, fast moving threats such as zombie networks posing particular challenges to corporate systems."

As a result, solutions will need to take a more holistic approach to email security in the coming year, spanning anti-virus, anti-spam, and network level attacks such as DHA's according to the Postini report. "Filtering on email contents will continue to diminish in effectiveness, giving way to more sophisticated sender behavior analysis," added Smith.

As an email security managed service, Postini performs real time inspection of every IP address that sends email to any of its customers. Based on patent-pending IP behavior analysis, Postini detects that certain SMTP connection patterns are indicative of malicious behavior, enabling Postini to block connections without needing to see the actual message. Processing more than 450 million inbound SMTP connections every day from 10 to 15 million distinct IP addresses, Postini currently blocks about half of all SMTP connections while the balance of messages are screened by content filters. This multi-layer approach incorporating real-time IP analysis has proven effective in combating the shifting tactics of spammers during the year.

As the leading provider of secure email boundary services, Postini is in a unique position to track email security activity and trends due to the scale of its email processing systems. Based on the processing of more business email than any organization in the world, the Postini Email Security Annual Review and Threat Report stems from a vast collection of email statistics that represent the most significant email threat trends dataset available anywhere.

A copy of the report is available for download at www.postini.com/whitepapers/?WPID=25.

About Postini

Postini, Inc. is the leading provider of email security and management services that protect email infrastructure by preventing spam and attacks from reaching the enterprise gateway. Postini's patented managed services model utilizes exclusive preEMPT transport and content filtering technology to eliminate spam and viruses, stop DoS and directory harvest attacks, safeguard content, and improve email performance. Founded in 1999, Postini processes more than three billion message connections every week for more than 4,200 companies. By blocking spam, viruses and attacks before they can reach the enterprise email gateway, Postini Perimeter Manager is designed to assure complete email security while saving bandwidth, conserving server capacity and minimizing administrative costs. For more information contact Postini at its Redwood City, California headquarters toll-free at 866.767.8461, or visit www.postini.com.

Media Contacts:
Marty Tacktill Bryan Ferraro
Postini Neale-May & Partners
650-482-3197 650-328-5555 ext. 277
marty@postini.combferraro@nealemay.com


Source: Postini, Inc.

CONTACT: Marty Tacktill of Postini, Inc., +1-650-482-3197, or
marty@postini.com; or Bryan Ferraro of Neale-May & Partners,
+1-650-328-5555, ext. 277, or bferraro@nealemay.com, for Postini, Inc.

Web site: http://www.postini.com/


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