IT teams still struggling with spam and viruses

IT teams are still struggling to protect their businesses from spam email and viruses, according to Mimecast. Their research also finds that the majority of organizations are yet to embrace the benefits of cloud-based email, while struggling to cope with an increasingly complex email environment.

The research, which surveyed IT and security professionals on the first day of the Infosecurity Europe conference in London, found that anti-spam and anti-virus is by far the biggest headache for IT teams; 78 percent of respondents identified it as their top email concern.

With 72 percent saying that their current spam prevention system is not “very effective’, it is clear that there is significant room for improvement when it comes to protecting employees from malicious email.

Despite cloud dominating much of the talk at this year’s Infosecurity Europe, it seems cloud adopters remain in a minority. The research reveals that three quarters of organisations (75 percent) are still entirely reliant on an on-premise email architecture.

12 percent of businesses now have a fully cloud-based email environment with 13 percent using a combination of on-premise and cloud-based email technology.

Email policy was another area of concern with 48 percent of organisations struggling to strike a balance over the use of personal email accounts, such as Hotmail or Gmail, in the workplace.

27 percent admitted that the use of personal email at work was a “huge problem’ and a “severe’ security threat. More concerning however are the 16 percent of businesses who allow employees to use their personal Hotmail or Gmail account for work use because it “suits users’ needs more than our business systems’. Five percent of organisations have banned the use of personal email accounts at work altogether.