Outwardly Spam looks cheap. The actual cost to all of the recipients is well into the Billions of dollars.

The year 2002 may have been relatively quiet for virus attacks, but security experts say this is likely to be the calm before the storm. In 2003, they say, new breeds of computer attacks are likely to emerge that are capable of knocking out millions of computers around the Internet in a matter of minutes.

Tougher anti-terrorism legislation in the wake of the September 11 attacks has had some impact on how virus writers behave, and noted that more attacks began to show up beginning around September 11, 2002. A September 11 - themed virus was found, though it did not make headlines, and shortly afterwards the destructive Slapper and Bugbear worms hit the Internet.

An innovation of Nimda and Code Red was that they did not rely on users downloading and executing an e-mail attachment. They use hacker exploits in combination with viruses so that they can execute on their own. You can now be infected without your downloading anything or knowing anything about it.

"Really what has happened is that the bar has risen on how fast and how hard viruses can hit." While these attacks caused little damage, security experts say it was probably just a test. "It was a rather trivial attack...

In the past, corporations were worried about their e-mail server, but today that's the least of their worries... The new breed of combined hacker and virus attack can take out your network AND everyone else you are connected to either by e-mail or network connection.

Utilities like Norton Anti-Virus will likely be no match considering they need to find a "cure" before they can send you a "patch" for the new strain. Meanwhile your system is left vulnerable to attack. Your only hope is that you are with a company that doesn't rely on off the shelf solutions.... but rather a company or ISP that specializes in network security with specialized firewalls, and/or spam and virus control. Your company's security depends on it.

Stealth Anti-Virus and Spam Control provides proactive, multi-tiered Internet Content Security for gateway and mail servers, protecting the entire enterprise from:

• viruses, trojans, worms, blended threats, and other malicious code that destroys or steals digital assets

• spam that reduces productivity, wasting bandwidth and space

• security exploits in corporate email servers and email clients

• inappropriate and nonproductive material

• the misuse of company resources

Spam is a big problem because of the private resources it consumes. Many business people spend up to fifteen minutes per day reading and deleting their Spam emails. A company with 100 knowledge workers earning an average of $40,000 per year each spending ten minutes per day deleting Spam would experience an added burden of $80,000 per year. This cost would be passed on to Internet users and non-users alike as they purchase products from this company at their local department store.

The volume and, often, the illegality of the messages has increased. In one case a single Spammer cost a popular large ISP over $4 million in a single year just for the computer systems to carry his SPAM traffic. On average each of the largest ISP's may incur costs close to, or above, ten million dollars per year to carry all of the unwanted e-mail traffic on their systems. Then comes the problem of all the added traffic generated when consumers send in all the messages to system administrators, etc. to report SPAM. One SPAM message could turn onto a total of 6, or more, messages that are sent once you count all of the associated messages.

What is the cost to you?

Lost time will vary for everyone depending on how much unwanted e-mail you receive. But it is important to note that the amount of malicious SPAM is on the rise costing consumers an astounding amount of money. Losses due to identity theft and stolen credit card numbers are on the rise. Often consumers give their personal information after receiving what they thought was a legitimate e-mail advertisement. This does not include cost to you and your family for the dramatic increase in adult oriented SPAM. While it is hard to estimate the impact of this in dollars, there is a cost.

The worst part about adult oriented e-mail is that, unlike the past where it was often sent in text form, it is increasingly sent as fully graphic images. One report suggested that the amount of adult oriented e-mail that is sent had increased by over 450% last year alone.