A recent post by Help Net Security caught my attention – 95% of email is spam. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) released its recent report on spam in the Anti-Spam Measures Survey 2009, uncovering the impact of spam, spam management and spam budgets. The survey also analyzed how e-mail service providers are combating spam in their networks, and identified the state of art in the fight against spam.
The survey targeted email service providers of different types and sizes, and received replies from 100 respondents from 30 different countries, throughout the EU (26/27 EU Member States); and 80 million mailboxes managed.
The basis for the report is significant because email has become a business-critical application for a majority of companies over the past several years, and during this time email systems have been bombarded with high volumes of spam.
Findings from the 2009 survey indicated that nearly all respondents treat spam as part of security operations, and on average, view the importance of spam as “significant.” The report further highlights that less than 5% of all email traffic is delivered to mailboxes, meaning that 95% of all email is spam.
The survey also uncovered that over 25% of respondents had spam accounting for greater than 10% of helpdesk calls and, on average, 5 kinds of measures are routinely used to combat the problem with blacklists being the most commonly used anti-spam tool.
For more info, you can download and view the full report here: http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/res/other-areas/anti-spam-measures/studies/spam-survey/at_download/fullReport