Top Five 2007 Communications Security and Compliance Predictions
Postini , the global leader in on-demand communications security, compliance and productivity solutions for email, instant messaging and the web, today announced that the recent spam explosion, which Postini reported in November, continues to grow at unprecedented levels.
Postini’s Top Five 2007 Communications Security and Compliance Predictions
As we move into 2007, the continued growth in level and new types of spam attacks along with growing business concerns over communications compliance, security and productivity usher in a new era of predictions from Postini.
* Email will be under unprecedented attack in 2007, so stopping spam and keeping email productive will be a front burner issue for business executives. Companies without state-of-the-art protection from spam, viruses, phishing and other attacks will be in danger of losing the use of their email systems as viable business tools.
* 2007 will be an explosive year for communications compliance initiatives. Email, instant messages and web content such as blogs are all legally discoverable documents that must be retained and produced on demand. Government, industry and legal mandates such as the newly enacted federal rules for civil procedure and the Graham-Leach Bliley Act will likely cause many businesses to re-think how they store, archive, discover and produce electronic communications.
* Companies will face a variety of government and industry requirements to secure electronic communications with their clients and business partners to protect privacy and confidential information. As such, Postini expects that 2007 will see an uptake in the use of encryption designed to ensure messages are protected from eavesdropping, theft and tampering. Protection of private consumer information will also become more regulated and businesses will want to take steps to ensure they comply with this mandate.
* Globalization, the growth of high-speed networks and the limited scope of international law enforcement will drive an escalated threat environment for all forms of electronic communication in 2007. More personal computers will be deployed and connected to always-on, high-speed networks, enabling bot-nets to grow dramatically. The international and distributed nature of criminal attacks that span multiple country borders make legal enforcement difficult. Money will remain the primary motivation for spammers, and attacks will continue to become more sophisticated.
* Web 2.0 is already driving the web to become a two-way communications medium just like email and instant messaging. Blogs, podcasts, community sites and chat forums are allowing employees to communicate in new and productive ways, but today these communications are unmanaged and unprotected, leading to considerable business risk. In 2007, companies will need to ensure the security and compliance of their web 2.0 initiatives just like any other channel of communications.
