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'Spam spikes' target SMEs

Published On 6 June 2007 at 12:37:55

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK are being targeted in more 'spam spikes', which are harming their operations, a new report claims.

MessageLabs's Intelligence Report for May 2007 shows that while overall levels of spam decreased in the month, there were increases in the number of Virus and phishing attacks that SMEs had to deal with.

However, the report also found that many businesses are now having to deal with 'spam spikes' - attacks where spammers target a particularly aggressive attack. In one spike, a business received more than 10,000 spam message attempts in an 11-hour period.

"This month the bad guys continued with their aggressive attacks by developing new tactics to fly under the radar and cause the most damage," explained Mark Sunner, the chief security analyst at MessageLabs.

"With the increase in spam spikes and new techniques with image spam, it is crucial for businesses to take a multi-layered security approach among email, Web and IM to protect their employees and their systems completely from these malicious attacks."

Recent research from Vasco found that SMEs received far more spam in January 2007 than they did a year before.

 

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