The McAfee Security division of Network Associates, Inc. announced a new initiative to combat spam through increased education, awareness, and technology, expanding upon the company's current anti-spam offerings.

McAfee Security offers several tips for businesses to reduce the number of unwanted messages entering employee email inboxes. According to leading analyst firms, spam will account for as much as 25% of all email messages through 2002, and nearly 76 billion unwanted commercial email messages will be delivered over the Internet in the year 2003.

But let's not forget that spam is not just a nuisance: spam wastes network bandwidth, processing power, disk space and employee time. According to Gartner Inc., lost productivity due to spam costs U.S. organizations $1 billion a year.


The increase in spam also raises security concerns to corporate networks since most viruses and malicious code are transmitted via email. Internet borne viruses such as "Loveletter" and "Nimda" propagate via email at an alarming rate causing billions of dollars worth of damage.

"As a leading anti-virus vendor, Network Associates is aware of the associated security and legal risks that spam brings to corporate networks," said Chris Christiansen, program vice president for IDC's Security Products and Infrastructure Software. "McAfee Security offers a viable solution to the growing threat of spam-based, email viruses."