Broadband providers throughout Europe have stepped up their efforts to improve the levels of security of their email services, a communications expert has claimed.

ISPs throughout the Continent have focussed on combating security breaches, viruses and control of spam for their customers, according to Pascal Manzano of EU security organisation Enisa.

This is borne out by figures showing that egress security is now offered by 90 per cent of providers, he said.

Addressing delegates at the Inbox Outbox email forum in London, Mr Manzano explained: "When egress filtering is provided it doesn’t directly benefit that ISP’s customers but the other providers, so we’re seeing a trend towards acting for more community benefit."

Meanwhile, further evidence of the growing focus on security from ISPs is the fact that almost 90 per cent now offer spam filtering free of charge, he added.