Lax email security is rampant at companies with 500 or more employees, results from a survey conducted by IDC for Secure Computing Corp. show. The results are scary: 72 percent of the companies surveyed had no safeguards in place to block data leaks via email, and 89 percent of the companies lacked an effective anti-spam technology. “While organizations have expressed concern about inbound and outbound email security, their current solutions are not getting the job done,” according to Brian Burke, program director for security products at Secure Computing.
Most survey respondents—85 percent—said they were very or extremely worried about data leakage. Only 28 percent have implemented a leak prevention program, while 56 percent plan to take action in 2009. More than 60 percent of those companies surveyed believe that joint “on-premise and in-the-cloud” security regimes are the most effective way to prevent inbound threats. And 70 percent want a single inbound/outbound solution.
Even though 40 percent of the respondents plan to augment their budgets for information protection and control in the next year and a half, IDC believes more must be done. “Organizations must accelerate their adoption of next generation email security solutions,” the study states. “The cost of not doing so is increased malware infection through spam and increased leakage.”
