IT and End Users Differ on Spam Severity

While slightly more than half of end users say spam isn’t a problem,

nearly 80 percent of IT managers say it’s a problem that they’re

struggling with, according to a new study.

But despite their difference of opinion of the situation today, both end

users and IT managers say it’s a problem that will plague them for years

to come.

”They really don’t have a positive outlook about this,” says Chris

Miller, director of product management for Symantec, Inc., an

information security company based in Cupertino, Calif. ”In some ways,

it’s almost like being on the Titanic. The iceberg has been hit and the

crew is aware of all the impacts. The passengers up on the deck don’t see the damage below and don’t know all the implications, so they think it’s a little more under control. But everybody knows it’s going to be a long night and there’s a lot more icebergs ahead.”

The study, conducted by Insight Express for Symantec, shows that overall

end users are a lot less concerned about spam than their counterparts in

the IT department.

Slightly more than 50 percent of end users surveyed say spam is not a

problem in their workplace. However, 79.1 percent of IT managers say it

is a problem in the workplace.

When end users were asked if they think spam is under control at their

company, 8.4 percent say it’s out of control; 23.3 percent say it’s

barely under control, and 68 percent say it is under control.

Compare that to IT administrators who were asked the same question. A

similar 10 percent say it’s out of control; 33 percent say it’s barely

out of control, and 56 percent say they have it under control.

”End users are experiencing some degree of respite from the amount of

spam they are seeing,” says Miller. ”But the IT administrators are

basically getting the brunt of this problem. They’re not just dealing

with one person’s spam. They’re dealing with the spam that’s coming in

to everybody.

”They’re dealing with bandwidth usage, storage usage, viruses it may be

bringing in, staffing and the hours they have to put in,” adds Miller.

”They’re spending a lot of time with this problem. The end user sees it

as garbage they have to deal with. The IT manager has a lot of other

issues.”

In fact, the survey shows that spam has become one of the top worries

for administrators.

When IT managers were asked what they spend the majority of their time

on, spam came in second only to malware. Miller says 42.7 percent of

managers report malware as their worst problem, and 16.4 percent say

it’s spam.

”For a lot of our customers, I’d say it’s a nightmare,” he adds.

And it appears to be a nightmare that isn’t going away anytime soon.

According to the survey, 70.9 percent of IT administrators say they’ll

still be wrestling with spam three years from now, while 72 percent of

users say it will only get worse.

”This is painting a pretty grim picture moving forward,” says Miller.

”They’re both seeing increases and they’re both seeing it as a

long-term problem.”

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020