Spammers targeting Dubai: Secure IT vital to beat malicious emails

It is every worker’s worst nightmare. You come into the office and boot up your computer only to find overnight your inbox is full of unsolicited emails.

Sorting and deleting the spam, all the messages trying to sell you products you do not want or emails trying to cheat you and your business out of money, all takes time. All this time employees spend wading through all the unwanted emails takes away from them being productive and, in many cases, innocent attempts to unsubscribe from these emails will leave employees, and the company, open to more attacks.

Targeting money

With money clearly the target, it is not surprising businesses in the United Arab Emirates are among those most targeted by spam. According to a report by researchers Justin Rao, Microsoft, and David Reiley, Google, spam generates $200 million each year and costs the US economy $20 billion a year, with that figure calculated on the cost of developing spam filters to fight the arrival of spam emails and the hours of lost productivity spent deleting emails.

Protection technologies

To protect against this, secure IT systems use multilayer protection technologies, defending against malware, ransomware and spam in a number of ways.

A typical email filtering system reads and reviews everything that comes into your inbox in a blink of an eye to determine whether it is safe to look at. Many systems refer to a global blacklist, automatically restricting mail from email address domains which are identified as threats, to make sure you only receive the emails which are important to you.

Many internet security companies also run their own additional anti-spam measures, such as spamtraps, which are hidden email addresses that are only found by aggressive spam programs. If a spamtrap receives an email, then its system knows that email will be spam as the address is otherwise unknown to everyone.

Secure IT system

Of course, the best way to avoid spam is to ensure your business has a secure IT system, something Penta Infrastructure Manager Rafik Kattoum says is not to be underestimated.

“With two decades of experience protecting data, we have seen how fast email threats have developed over the years. Which is why we use Symantec Messaging Gateway, the industry-leading data protection technology, to save our clients the hassle of dealing with costly ransomware, malware and spam attacks.

“We are always working to improve our systems’ efficiency and ensure our clients are protected from the latest threats.

“Our systems are independently scrutinised and tested by Ernst and Young, to make sure they are fully secure, meeting with all major financial regulators’ compliance requirements.”

Focus

With Penta’s enterprise-grade, anti-spam, anti-virus email systems, denying spammers access to your email accounts and address database, your staff can concentrate on their business, rather than focus on deleting unwanted mail.

 

The importance of secure file sharing

 Economics of Spam Researchers expose the true cost of spam to businesses
 Research paper – David Reilly, Justin M. Rao

 Huge increase in email-borne attacks
 Radicati Group report exposes growth in malicious email   
 Security Brief EU

 Email Statistics Report 2017-2021
Silicon Valley tech market research firm report
 The Radicati Group