OPSWAT is announcing the results of a recent email security survey held in partnership with Red Earth Software, developers of email security solutions for Exchange Server.
The survey was completed by 146 IT Administrators at small to medium-sized businesses using Microsoft Exchange Server. They were asked various questions relating to email security.
The survey revealed that over 50% of the respondents experienced malware breaches in the past 18 months. Alarmingly, half of the companies surveyed declared that phishing emails managed to get past filters and trick employees.
Spam and malware were identified as the two top weakest links respondents had with their current email security solution. From the survey, OPSWAT was able to collect some key statistics on the email security practices of companies and expand on several identified issues.
· 51% of companies had malware get past their email filters in the last 18 months
· 50% of companies had employees that clicked on phishing links in the last 18 months
· 55% of respondents are ‘not certain’ or ‘not certain at all’ that their employees will not click on phishing links or malicious email attachments
· 39% of respondents use only one anti-malware engine
· 68% of companies do not use any form of email encryption
Internal training is essential, all levels of staff should be informed and made aware about IT Security and hopefully the aforementioned statistics will be significantly reduced.
“With the sheer number of new viruses introduced every day, it is not surprising that 51% of the respondents experienced a malware breach, particularly since 39% only utilized one anti-malware solution,” said Tony Berning, Product Manager for the Metascan product line at OPSWAT. “By using only one or two anti-virus engines, companies are exposing themselves to malware threats, since no anti-virus engine can be accurate 100% of the time.”
