A year ago, the $10 billion-a-year insurance provider received 2.6 million spam E-mails. By November, the number had nearly doubled to 4.8 million.
As if trying to keep missives offering cheap Viagra or get-rich-quick schemes out of in-boxes weren’t enough of a job, a steadily increasing onslaught of spyware and adware is further taxing IT resources. EFunds’ Jones is working to combat all types of attacks, whether they’re brought about by spyware or other means.
UnumProvident is one of a growing number of companies beginning to investigate anti-spyware products. By and large, companies allocate more IT dollars to fighting the twin scourges of spyware and adware, while continuing to pump time and money into keeping spam of every variety under control.
Just over 70% of 400 business-technology professionals recently surveyed by InformationWeek Research will spend somewhat or significantly more money to manage spyware, and more than 60% say the same of adware. E-mail accounted for half of inbound messages in 2004, up from 40% the year prior.
Two types of small applications can be installed on PCs by specially crafted E-mail messages, “free” software downloads, and other tricks. But they steal time from IT staffers, who must handle more help-desk calls from users who can’t get rid of pop-up ads and clean up systems suffering from performance slowdowns that stealth adware or spyware installations bring on.
Kim Jones, director of global security services for electronic financial processing company eFunds Corp., knows the problems adware can cause. Criminals and hackers use spyware such as keystroke loggers and Trojan horses to capture everything typed on PCs or to take control of systems to steal user names and passwords that could be used to attack and gain access to business resources. Last summer, Jones started using MainNerve Inc.’s Adaptive Darknet Service, a network of sensors scattered about the Internet spotting hacker command-and-control networks, which is constantly updated with attacking IP addresses.
McAfee this week adds spyware blocking capability to its McAfee IntruShield network intrusion prevention app, and it’s delivering a beta version of its Anti-Spyware Enterprise Edition Module that will work with its corporate anti-virus product.
Technology already has made a dent in spam problems. UnumProvident’s Fleury has seen results: The company uses spam filtering from SurfControl plc, and despite the uptick in spam being sent to users, employees aren’t seeing many of those messages in their in-boxes.
Cox now uses two CipherTrust Inc. secure E-mail appliances, and Warlick estimates they block 99% of the 38 million spam E-mails that head Cox’s way each month.
Spam is “now a security threat,” because more spam E-mails today contain adware or spyware that users unwittingly install.
http://www.securitypipeline.com/57701881