Email Security Features

User names and passwords aren't secure, and momentum continues to build across the industry to solve this problem in a manageable way. The first months of 2008 has seen spam levels rise with the economic situation and Olympics adding fuel to the fire. Most spam is sent to non-existent addresses, but that can still generate annoying messages for genuine users. Large-scale data breaches across both the private and public sectors dominated the news throughout the year. Rob Buckley looks back. "It's the economy, stupid." It worked for spammers now, and it will work for spammers in the future. When the subject of email security is mentioned, the first thought that comes to mind is "spam" or more appropriately "anti-spam." Spammers are finding new ways to bypass filters, but that doesn't mean you have to let them bombard your inbox. Rob Buckley reports In the last six months, image-based spam has pushed its way to the forefront of spam technique discussions. Image-based spam is not new, but it is now wreaking havoc on the effectiveness of many anti-spam products. The theme in the labs this month was policy, policy and more policy. Lab manager Mike Stephenson looked at email content filtering, which depends on policies for its success, while reviewer Justin Peltier evaluated policy management products. In these two areas, policy determines success, but the two views are quite different. Today one out of four emails on the internet is an image spam message. This is not because spammers have just realised the marketing benefits of captive colours. Instead, this is because the spammers have identified a weakness in many anti-spam systems and are moving diligently to maximise this opportunity by fully exploiting this weakness. We've all heard about the recent rise in spam, and while I dislike spam as much as the next person, I recently received a spam message that got me quite excited. Today one out of four emails on the internet is an image spam message. This is not because spammers have just realised the marketing benefits of captive colours. Instead, this is because the spammers have identified a weakness in many anti-spam systems and are moving diligently to maximise this opportunity by fully exploiting this weakness. It's easy to make email appear to come from an internal user, warns Ken Munro. So be on the lookout. SurfControl's CEO may be a relative newcomer to the infosec world, but she is already pursuing an aggressive growth policy for the security vendor, Paul Fisher reports. Anti-spam and anti-virus are undeniable necessities, but today's threat landscape has changed, requiring multiple layers of security technologies to keep business-critical email flowing. Email security is more than simply anti-spam and anti-virus. It's time to put true preemptive protection in email security.