Mail Authentication won’t stop spam, say experts

66% of senior IT executives, interviewed at Gartner’s European IT Security Summit in London this week, believe that email authentication will become widely used in the near future.

However, 90% do not believe it will stop spam. Half of the respondents believe that all email authentication will achieve is to change the way spam is sent, rather than stopping it.

Almost half of those surveyed (49%) believe that if spam keeps rising at current levels, the email system will become unusable within 10 years, with 33% believing that the system will be rendered useless within one to two years.

Nearly one third of respondents (32%) think Government’s are responsible for stopping spam through legislation, 30% think ISPs should act to stop spam; while 13% believe that spam will never be stopped, despite the industry’s efforts. Just 1% think that Microsoft should assume responsibility for halting spam.

John Cheney, CEO of BlackSpider Technologies, said: “The danger is that the first people who will conform to email authentication will be spammers, who tend to be early adopters. The proposals give organisations a false sense of security that they can identify spam when in fact there is no one silver bullet to doing so.”

BlackSpider Technologies’ own analysis from the millions of emails it scans each day indicates that spam levels are currently running at 67% of all emails; up from 63% the previous month.

The company surveyed 150 of Europe’s senior IT executives and security experts attending Gartner’s IT Security Summit in London, 21-22 September.