Businesses lose confidence in email

Australian organisations are increasingly concerned about the amount of legitimate emails blocked by spam filters, a new survey by messaging vendor Proofpoint has found.

The third Proofpoint Securing assets For Enterprise (SaFE) Survey of IT managers and executives in Australia found 46 percent of respondents are not certain they are receiving all genuine (non spam) emails sent to them.

Gerry Tucker, regional head for Proofpoint in APAC said the most common issue for email users was not that they received too much spam, but that they were uncertain they were receiving all genuine emails sent to them.

"The survey shows just how dysfunctional email has become at many organisations when the solution -- blocking suspicious emails -- has become a more common problem than the issue it is meant to fix," said Tucker.

According to Proofpoint, spam is a growing problem for 72.5 percent of Australian organisations with many saying they have lost business (20 percent); suffered security or privacy breaches (20 percent) and 51 percent said staff productivity is negatively impacted by email issues;

The results indicated that Australian businesses are increasingly losing confidence in email, said Proofpoint. "Our latest survey highlights how Australian email users are gradually losing confidence in email and the negative effect this has on most organisations," said Tucker.

"While negative impacts on staff productivity are most common, significant numbers of respondents report more serious impacts such as losing business or loss of customer confidence."