Postini Annual Email Security Report: 10 Times More Spam for Smaller Companies in 2004

Postini (www.postini.com), a 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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.