2007 as year of corporate data leakage concerns and growth of profit-driven spam

Tumbleweed announced the five most pressing messaging security threats that will emerge or continue to plague IT security in 2007. As anticipated, data leakage concerns and continued growth of profit-driven spam will top the list in the coming year.

1. Sensitive data leakage for public companies becomes a huge issue in 2007. Organizations will have to address the fact that sensitive data like intellectual property or customer information is traveling outside the enterprise, typically via unsecured methods.

2. Spam problems will continue to grow and be increasingly profit-driven. Most spam will be focused on a few categories with the most profit potential. For example, 60 percent of spam at end of 2006 was for stock tips or drugs – both areas where there is a clear profit motive and will continue to grow in 2007.

3. Spammers will continue to adapt to exploit new ways to circumvent spam filters. For example, spammers will seek to randomize images to evade spam filters to penetrate inboxes. The most recent example, that will gain more steam in 2007, is “logo gibberish” spam – legitimate graphics thrown into an email to confuse spam filters.

4. 2007 will see hackers and spammers look to take advantage of audio and video files in addition to standard email messages to deliver viruses, mask and deliver spam messages and generally avoid detection by conventional spam filters.

5. Botnets, armies of hijacked computers used to deliver spam, will remain an issue in the coming year. These botnets allow spammers to deliver thousands of messages while avoiding reputation filters that block known spammers.