Secure Data, a member of the JSE-listed ERP.com Group, and the southern African distributor for Trend security software, today announced that findings from the Trend Micro/TechRepublic spam survey of technology professional and IT decision-makers.
Spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail, was identified as a top technology priority by survey respondents across the US and more than two-thirds of the respondents expressed concern over the loss of productivity and threat of viruses and malicious code found in spam.
"The survey results confirmed many of the trends that we have seen with our customers," said John Maddison, Product Group Manager for gateway products at Trend Micro, Inc. "Both spam and viruses cause a loss of productivity in different ways, techniques from these non-legitimate e-mails are overlapping and both need stopping at the gateway before they enter the customers network."
Key findings of the Trend Micro/TechRepublic spam survey:
* More than 70% of respondents agreed that spam has reached epidemic proportions.
* More than half of the organisations in the survey have experienced a 25%-100% increase in spam volume over the past three months.
A threat to productivity and security:
* Approximately two-thirds of technology professionals worry most about lost productivity and malicious code/viruses as a result of spam.
* One in three respondents believed that viruses originate in the spam received by their organisation.
* Spam is among top three IT priorities for nearly half of all respondents' organisations.
* Roughly one-third agree that viruses originate in the spam received by the organisation
Preferred solutions:
* While spam was clearly an immediate priority, nearly 30% of the organisations surveyed did not have an enterprise-wide anti-spam solution in place.
* The majority of respondents agreed that the most effective spam filtering occurs at the gateway and server.
* The top three factors that determine which anti-spam solution the organisation selects are high catch rate, vendor reputation and low false positives.
* Respondents identified heuristics, real-time blacklists and rules-based solutions as key technology solutions to stop spam.
Survey methodology:
The nationwide survey was conducted online in August and September 2003. More than 200 technology professionals from organisations with 100 or more employees responded to the survey. All respondents identified themselves as anti-spam purchase influencers or decision-makers.
For further information, please contact Dean Brazier at telephone (011) 257 8600; fax (011) 257 8699; e-mail deanb@sd.co.za.
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