Hot trends in email security 10 March, 2010 By Mark Cox

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Adoption of email encryption technology has been steadily increasing over time. In a Proofpoint study from June 2009, only 43% of organizations said that they had deployed an email encryption solution.

Effectiveness was still the top criterion when selecting email security solutions: 43% of respondents said that "effectiveness/accuracy" was the most important factor when selecting an email security solution, while 20% said that "ease of administration" was most important. 16% said "cost of solution" was most important. 11% selected choice of "deployment method (e.g., SaaS versus appliance)", while just 6% cited "vendor brand/reputation" as the most important decision factor.

Uncaught spam and phishing emails top email annoyances list: Asked about the "most annoying" types of email, 39% of respondents cited spam that gets through their organization's filter as their top email annoyance. 27% said the same of uncaught phishing emails.

But for a third of respondents, various types of legitimate email were the most annoying. 15% of respondents cited legitimate email newsletters and marketing emails that are sent too frequently as their top annoyance. 10% said legitimate emails from coworkers or business contacts that "I just don't have time to answer" were most annoying. 7% cited social media notifications and other types of legitimate, but non-essential, email messages as most annoying.

"Enterprises rely on email as the most important channel for business communications and are keenly aware of the increasing sophistication of inbound security threats that threaten the effectiveness, efficiency and usability of their email systems," said Peter Galvin, chief marketing officer at Proofpoint. "But aside from inbound threats, companies realize that protecting confidential corporate information and private personal data in email is just as critical from a business and compliance perspective."

Survey participants submitted their answers electronically at the Proofpoint booth. Half of respondents were from organizations with 2000 or more email users. More than three quarters of respondents held security or other technical job titles, while less than one quarter held legal, compliance or other non-IT roles.