Trend Micro has released a platform for delivering email security as an online service (Software as a Service - SaaS), and hinted that a similar service for managing all web threats could follow.
First up is Trend Micro Email Reputation Services, which provides filtering against malicious email content. The platform will eventually offer services covering infrastructure from the gateway to the desktop.
More info on Trend Micro SecureCloud™ Platform.
British workers are suffering “e-mail stress” because they are swamped with messages and constantly monitoring their inbox. Staff are left tired, frustrated and unproductive as they struggle to cope with a constant deluge of e-mails, researchers from Glasgow and Paisley universities have found.
More than a third said they thought they checked their Inbox every 15 minutes and 64 per cent said they looked more than once an hour. When researchers fitted monitors to their computers, workers were found to be viewing e-mails up to 40 times an hour. About 33 per cent said they felt stressed by the volume of e-mails and the need to reply quickly. A further 28 per cent said they felt “driven” when they checked messages because of the pressure to respond. Just 38 per cent of workers were relaxed enough to wait a day or longer before replying.
Researchers found that many workers felt “invaded” by e-mails interrupting them as they tried to concentrate on their work. They felt pressured to switch applications to see whether the e-mails were urgent.
Female workers felt under greater pressure to respond than men. Karen Renaud, a computer scientist at Glasgow University, and Judith Ramsay, a psychologist at Paisley University, surveyed almost 200 workers. They concluded: “E-mail has become an indispensable tool in business. However, there is evidence that e-mail can exert a powerful hold over its users and that many computer users experience stress as a result of e-mail-related pressure.”
Ms. Renaud said: “E-mail is the thing that now causes us the most problems in our working lives. It’s an amazing tool, but it’s got out of hand. E-mail harries you. You want to know what’s in there, especially if it’s from a family member or friends, or your boss, so you break off what you are doing to read it.
“The problem is that when you go back to what you were doing, you’ve lost your chain of thought and, of course, you are less productive. People’s brains get tired from breaking off from something every few minutes to check e-mails. The more distracted you are by distractions, including email, then you are going to be more tired and less productive.”
Workers in creative occupations or jobs involving periods of concentration focussing on getting an important project finished — such as academics, writers, architects and journalists — were likely to be worst affected, she said, while those in call centres for whom constant e-mails were integral to their work would not have the same problem.
Source: Times Online
Spammers using MS Excel for Pump & Dump Scams
Stock market pump-and-dump fraudsters have found a new vehicle for their email-borne spam campaigns, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, according to MXSweep, the managed email filtering specialists. The soon to be worthless stocks are being promoted in file at
53% of BlackBerry users check email on loo !!!
Disturbing statistics of the day: 53 per cent of people with portable email devices like BlackBerrys check their email in the bathroom. Some 59 per cent check in bed, in their pyjamas; 37 per cent while they’re driving; and 12 per cent admit to checking t
Multi-layered approach required to protect intellectual property news on Security Park
IT security is all about knowing what the risks are, and how far you can trust users. Have you ever wondered about exactly how much of a threat your users are to your organisation? Well, wonder no more, as an in depth study by Queens University, Belfast a
New research by Mesmo Consultancy report that over 50% of UK business users are self-inflicted ‘emailaholics’.
Over 50% of UK business users are unable to walk away from their emails, even when on leave or off sick, according to the results of Mesmo Consultancy’s latest research on email behaviour as revealed at Inbox/Outbox 2007.
More than half of the 415 respondents check emails when out of the office and 12% check over 5 times a day. When questioned on the main reason for keeping in touch with the office, 67% admitted that it is purely self-inflicted whilst only 20% log in because their office expects them to do so.
In a technology-enabled “always-on” society, where people are connected to their workplace 24/7, email addiction is rapidly becoming a widespread affliction, highlighted by the mushrooming number of internet sites and blogs suggesting rehab tips and techniques. As the Mesmo survey reported, only 17% of respondents give colleagues permission to deal with their emails in their absence and over 80% read every single email in their inbox.
“The role that email plays in office politics (CC and BCC being the most lethal weapons), the fear of missing something and being blamed for it, together with the amount of personal emails received at work addresses are surely accountable for the lack of delegation and obsessive inbox scanning behaviour, contributing directly to the addiction,” commented Dr. Monica Seeley, founder of Mesmo Consultancy. “Moreover, as the survey showed, the majority of users are expecting to receive a reply to a business email in less than 24 hours. And if a reply is sent immediately, that sets the expectation for the next round of communications, fostering a very reactive and rather unproductive way of working.”
Issues around work efficiency and productivity were even highlighted by the way in which the survey’s responses were collected. The research, conducted by email amongst 4000 UK business users with 66% of respondents at managerial/director level, attracted approximately half of the responses within the first hour of sending out the survey. This indicates that the majority of business users are willing to be distracted from the task in hand by emails landing in their inbox, breaking concentration with obvious loss of productivity as a consequence.
Source: PublicTechnology.net
Proofpoint’s 4th annual study of outbound email and content security issues (http://www.proofpoint.com/outbound), found that outbound email and other electronic communication protocols continue to grow as a source of risk for companies.Proofpoint’s survey of 308 email decision-makers at large U.S. companies shows expanding concern over sensitive information leaving enterprises through outbound email and other electronic communications channels.
The study found that 32.1% of surveyed companies with 1,000 or more employees hire staff to read or analyse the contents of outbound email. 38.8% of larger companies surveyed (those with more than 20,000 employees) employ staff for this purpose. Additionally, 16.9% of companies surveyed employ staff whose primary or exclusive job responsibility is to read or otherwise analyse email content.
Nearly 28% have terminated employees for email policy violations; 20% have disciplined employees for improper use of blogs/message boards; 14% for social network violations; 11% for improper use of media sharing sites.
Email remains a primary source of information leakage, which can result in regulatory compliance violations, legal problems and loss of competitive position. Respondents estimated that nearly 20% of all outbound email poses a legal, regulatory or financial risk.
More than a third of surveyed companies investigated a suspected email leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months.
Source: Proofpoint
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