White Papers for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

Minimizing the Risks Associated with Email, Web, and Instant Message Communications

MessageLabs

Several years ago, most Internet threats were relatively benign examples of a young adolescent’s technical expertise but over time they have evolved into increasingly sophisticated domestic and foreign attacks that are designed to capture financial, personal, or strategic business information. Threats now come in the form of deliberately malicious acts, and exploitive opportunities for hackers and/or organized crime. The impact is serious, and the landscape of victims is getting broader every day. In response, no organization can afford to have its networks remain unprotected.

Spammers do not distinguish among the sizes of organizations they target. SMBs receive as much and sometimes even more spam as larger enterprises, but are less likely to have the defense systems in place to thwart it. For small businesses, spam can very quickly become a silent killer, overwhelming the resources of a mail system or network before an effective countermeasure can be enforced. In fact, according to statistics compiled by MessageLabs Intelligence, approximately one out of every 1.33 email messages is spam, one in every 126 messages contains a virus or Trojan horse threat, and one in seven employees will handle some form of harmful web content.

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