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Postini released an annual report on the state of email security that points to dramatic vulnerabilities for small businesses.

It also points to vulnerabilities for certain vertical industries that are experiencing much heavier attacks than other types of companies. The findings also show that even as attention to the cost and prevention of spam reached a high point in 2004, threats to email systems grew worse as the incidence of spam remained at 75-80 percent of email, virus attacks grew threefold, and directory harvest attacks (DHAs) continued to plague corporate email servers.

"What we're seeing is a profound increase in the sophistication and incidence of tactics designed to fool conventional anti-spam filters," said Chris Smith, senior product marketing director at Postini. "Spammers are also finding smaller companies more susceptible to attack since they typically have fewer and less sophisticated defenses in place than larger enterprises."

The report reveals that DHA attacks are alarmingly widespread, with the average attack consisting of 250 invalid email deliveries attempts. The result is that the average company is plagued by almost 40,000 invalid delivery attempts per day.

In a look ahead, the Postini report predicts an intensified battle against spam that will continue to escalate as email threats evolve at a faster pace.

"Postini's predictions for 2005 are consistent with what we see ahead in the email security landscape," said Matt Cain, industry analyst with the Meta Group. "More sophisticated, phishing style attacks will proliferate as bulk spamming scams decrease in effectiveness. We see dynamic, fast moving threats such as zombie networks posing particular challenges to corporate systems."

As a result, solutions will need to take a more holistic approach to email security in the coming year, spanning anti-virus, anti-spam, and network level attacks such as DHA's according to the Postini report. "Filtering on email contents will continue to diminish in effectiveness, giving way to more sophisticated sender behavior analysis," added Smith.

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