DENVER – Most enterprises have a false sense of security when it comes to protecting themselves against Internet-borne malware – particularly from e-mail. Truth is, analysts such as Gartner say that as many as 75% of enterprises will be the victims of targeted stealth attacks with financial motivation – spyware or bots, for instance – and will remain "blissfully unaware" when infections go undetected by their defenses.

At the same time, spam shows no signs of ever letting up. It increased by 400% between September 2006 to September 2007, said Peter Watkins, CEO security firm Webroot Software, during a keynote presentation at Network World's IT Roadmap conference in Denver. (Also read about Keys to ITIL Success, based on another talk from IT Roadmap.)

Then there are whole new kinds of attacks, such as the malware being written for gaming worlds like Second Life. Wherever people are willing to trade real-world dollars for game-world valuables, hackers have followed. This has given hackers creative ways to entice users to open those infected spam messages or visit malicious Web sites.

On top of all that, spyware (compare antispyware products) has become really well-written now that it is being composed by smart individuals doing so for a living. Their goal is not about making the evening news with a horrific new virus. They want infected computers under their control never to be discovered.

With all of this in mind, Watkins says it is becoming increasingly clear to security vendors such as himself that software-as-a-service is a superior method for delivering some forms of security compared with in-house software or appliances (see Networking's 50 Greatest Arguments: Software as a Service vs. packaged applications). Webroot makes endpoint spyware software and has recently branched out to offer secure e-mail via SaaS.

While SaaS wasn't very feasible even a few years ago, advances in the data center, the cloud and in the SaaS industry make it far more robust, reliable and affordable today. As such, it is increasingly attractive to the small business who can use it to get enterprise-class products at a consumer-per-seat price. New services with better performance than in-house software will soon have enterprises warming to the technology, too, Watkins believes. At a recent SaaS conference, Watkins says he was wowed by the progress other security vendors have made in this arena, even able to deliver such functions as single sign-on via SaaS.