| "80%
of business people surveyed believe email
to be more valuable than the phone for business
communications... these findings underscore
a critical need to bring phone like reliability
and stability to the email environment."
-Meta Group,
April 2003 |
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| "Email
represents one of the greatest risks to
the enterprise through the delivery of viruses,
spam and other unwanted or malicious content,
all of which can have significant cost implications"
-Maureen Caplan
Grey, Gartner Group, April 2003 |
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Email has become a business critical
communications tool and has the same permanence and
legal status as written memos or other documents and
as such is subject to the disclosure obligations of
national Data Protection Acts.
Email is independent of time,
location and platform and is therefore difficult to
control. People today expect to be able to send and
receive email instantly and globally via multiple devices,
regardless of time and location.
Copies of any email may potentially be made available
to a third party at some point in the future.
What may have been considered an annoyance some years
ago, such as jokes or images - can now result in high
profile legal actions being taken against the company
for sexual harassment or the illicit distribution of
pornography.
Viruses, spam, pornographic material and other harmful
or unwanted content can seriously damage your company's
health.
It's not just about loss of productivity. Legal liabilities,
IT resources, sexual harassment, HR issues, and
company policies - they are all exposed to the real
and ever increasing threats posed by email.
The figures also show that the threat posed by both
spam and viruses continues to increase at an alarming
rate. Across all industries MessageLabs Intelligence
figures show that the frequency of viruses has risen
from an average of only one in 652 in 2000, to one in
189 so far in 2003. The increase in amounts of spam
is also dramatic - in 2002 across all sectors an average
of one in 11 emails could be classified as unsolicited
and unwanted. So far in 2003, that ratio has already
climbed to one in only 6 emails being spam.
The impact on productivity is underscored by Gartner
research which reveals that on average employees spend
49 minutes each day just managing their email.
The type of viruses that are now wreaking the most havoc
today simply didn't exist a few years ago. These
more potent viruses have been evolving continuously
to exploit techniques taking advantage of our hunger
to keep pace with the latest technology and to combat
the advances made in the contemporary anti-virus world.
However, the traditional anti-virus signature-based
solutions for protecting our computers haven't to all
intents and purposes managed to keep pace with this
burgeoning arms race. For example, only a few
years ago, a new virus emerging from the other side
of the world wouldn't be a threat to most of us for
perhaps several weeks or even months.
An equally global and ubiquitous solution is needed
to address the rapidly escalating problem of email security.
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