In terms of cost per head of population, spam costs US business
$59 per person, while in Japan the cost is $41, in Germany $55 and
in the UK $42 (about £22).
Much of the cost is in lost employee productivity, according to
the report. Not included in the figures are immeasurable items,
such as the missed "opportunity cost" of a new customer order
that's incorrectly discarded as spam.
The San Francisco-based researchers also found that
organisations can minimise the loss of productivity by deploying an
accurate anti-spam system. Systems that have a very low false
positive rating – which relates to the number of legitimate e-mails
filtered out as spam – are needed to drive costs down further.
However, the company warned that desktop-based anti-spam tools
often have a lower return on investment than server-based tools – a
result of higher purchase costs and ongoing maintenance and
helpdesk costs.
Desktop filtering may in some circumstances be more expensive
than manual filtering, where the employee simply deletes the spam
himself, says the report.
