IM Attacks Escalate

SAN CARLOS, Calif. -- Postini, the global leader in Integrated Message Management, today announced that its Monthly Message Security & Management Update for July confirms a 160 percent increase over June in instant messaging (IM) attacks against corporate networks. In July, Postini detected and prevented new IM threats including Prokeylogger, which logs the keystrokes typed by the user, captures passwords and screenshots, and sends them to identity thieves.

Postini also noted in July a continuing rise in encrypted email traffic, as organizations around the world increasingly use encryption to protect sensitive communications with their business partners, contractors, regulators and remote employees. Postini processed more than 325 million encrypted messages in July, representing eight percent of all valid email messages and a 13 percent increase in encrypted traffic over the prior month.

The ability to encrypt email, based on an industry standard called Transport Layer Security (TLS), is built into every modern email server and is easy and free to use. Postini research shows that while the use of TLS to encrypt email messages continues to increase month over month, today nearly 90 percent of businesses worldwide have simply failed to turn on the TLS functionality available to them for free on their email servers.

Postini takes TLS one step further by allowing companies to guarantee secured email exchange with anyone – both for trusted business partners and for recipients whose encryption support is unknown. This is important because standard TLS will revert to unencrypted communication if the recipient email server does not have TLS enabled. Postini can prevent this from happening, guaranteeing that no sensitive messages are ever sent in the clear over the Internet.

“It’s a positive sign that every month more companies around the world are using TLS to encrypt their messages and protect their business information,” said Andrew Lochart, senior director of solutions marketing at Postini. “Postini operates one of the world’s largest secure email networks to help our clients protect their sensitive information and comply with corporate and regulatory policies.”

Postini Inc.