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Donna Buenaventura
http://forums.cnet.com
June 10, 2010
Costs of outbound spam and pressures from new laws and regulations driving Internet service providers to clean up their own networks For Internet service providers, e-crime is not cheap.
The problem of customers' compromised computers sending spam can dramatically impact an ISP's bottom line, according to a survey by Osterman Research released today: Nearly 40 percent of ISPs had their IP addresses blacklisted by the Real Time Blackhole Lists (RBLs) in the past year. A blacklisted mail server could lead to dropped e-mail -- and an increase in support calls to the ISP.
The outbound spam issue highlighted by the report is one example of the business issues that compromised computers pose for ISPs. One in six providers spends more than $100,000 attempting to prevent outbound spam from impacting their business, according to the report, which was funded by e-mail security service CommTouch.
"I haven't found a service provider that does not have at least a couple of people tasked with dealing with outbound spam," says Asaf Greiner, vice president of product for CommTouch. "If you don't deal with outbound spam, you run the risk of having your IPs blocked." Nearly half of respondents said outbound spam adds to their costs of doing business, wastes time for the IT departments, damages their reputations, and affects their customers' service levels.
The outbound spam problem is just one way Internet service providers are being driven by regulatory and market forces to pay more attention to the security of their customers' networks. Some Internet service providers have already embarked on initiatives to clean the traffic flowing through their systems. ISPs in Australia, for instance, have signed an agreement to notify consumers if a PC is compromised by malicious software.
Those ISPs could curtail the compromised computer's bandwidth to slow the spread of harmful code. In the Netherlands, more than a dozen ISPs have agreed to exchange information about security issues, notify users if their system is compromised, and block traffic from infected systems, essentially quarantining users.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?threadID=397229
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