EIM draws up strategies to fight spam

In an exclusive interview with Khaleej Times, Maroua Naim, General Manager, EIM, reacted to the comment that the EIM and the UAE, like other ISPs and countries had suffered by the spam and virus attacks on a significant scale this year.

"EIM monitors the outbreaks of viruses on a worldwide scale, and we alert our customers to any newly spread viruses. To this extent, EIM created a web page at eim.ae/virusalerts/ to keep its customers abreast of the latest news on viruses and worms.

She noted that as the problem of viruses and worms became more serious during the year, EIM launched on December 21, a free anti-virus service to its entire 400,000 plus EIM Mail hosted accounts to protect them from incoming e-mail viruses, with details of this service available on www.eim.ae /mail/antivirus.

Popular Internet newsletter, eSecurity Planet Trends, in its issue dated December 23, noted that in no other year have computer viruses and worms wreaked so much damage as in this past year, costing billions of dollars in damages and clean-up, and shaking the Internet's backbone by slowing down travel, knocking out ATM machines, and halting emergency calls.

Ms Naim noted that EIM like other ISPs was affected by the new world phenomenon of spam emails, and had launched a new web site to explain the problem to its customers and to advise them on how to avoid being spammed with unwanted e-mail. The anti-spam information can be found at www.eim.ae/mail/antispam.

"Also, we have given each customer the option of filtering spam e-mails by using his or her own personal filters which are available at the web email site of EIM Mail Service at eimmail.ae.

She said that EIM was going to take further steps to combat spam this year.

"Presently EIM throttles e-mail from high volume sources, blocks known spammers on an adhoc basis and limits the number of recipients for incoming and outgoing messages to 50 e-mail addresses only. Also, we are investigating and researching new comprehensive techniques and technical solutions to better fight spam and at the same time not affect genuine e-mail. Combating spam e-mails is one of our priorities for the coming year," she said.

Maroua Naim said that EIM's infrastructure is hosted at the Etisalat Data Centre (EDC), which uses the state of the art security measures to protect its occupant physically and logically.

"We don't often divulge details of these measures for fear of exposing ourselves to spammers, and keep a low profile," she said.

Asked what her predictions for Internet advancement in the UAE would be in the coming year, Maroua Naim said that EIM always strives to improve access methods, quality of service and infrastructure for the UAE.

"Although much has been achieved, technology does not stand still, which dictates that the business of the Internet must be one of permanently looking over the horizon to the next development. Specifically, EIM's immediate priorities are to expand access methods and our infrastructure for the UAE, but besides that we are now looking into wireless technologies for the future."

She noted that specifically these technologies would entail improving levels of customer service and focus on making broadband the core emphasis of EIM over the coming year. "EIM will develop wireless and fixed solutions to expand coverage to the entire country.

Ethernet to the home, Hotspots and fixed wireless are just some of the high-speed technologies that will complement ADSL and Cable, and we are also concentrating on developing applications relevant to the local market that will drive broadband penetration. E-learning and online gaming are key examples, that are rapidly becoming popular in the UAE," she said.

She also said that EIM was looking at building alliances and partnerships with content providers for the Internet, and at increasing its web-hosting customers by introducing new and enhanced packages throughout the region.

"With VAT tax laws applying in the US and Europe, companies are realising the benefits of hosting locally," she concluded.

Commenting online on the issue, Chris Belthoff, senior analyst at Sophos, Inc., a Boston-based anti-virus and anti-spam company, said: "This year was definitely the busiest one on record for us, we started with Slammer in January, and then we had BugBear in June. At the time, people thought that was pretty bad. But then the major event of the year was the one-two punch of Blaster and Sobig in August. They were very different - one spread machine to machine, and the other was a mass-mailing worm - but both very damaging."