Graham Henley, former law enforcement officer with the Australian Federal Police and current director of data recovery and forensic software firm Get Data, said security vendors are yet to create the ideal product to solve the e-mail problem.

"Reputation-based e-mail is a great idea, but let's just see if it works; a lot of the big players are still struggling to get it right," Henley said.

Peter Stewart, the chairman of antispam provider New Millenium Solutions, believes the industry has lost its way.

"One definition of madness is continually trying the same thing and expecting a different result; filtering isn't working," Stewart said adding that systems that check IP addresses in e-mail messages isn't the solution.

His company has developed a solution called TotalBlock which is based on "challenge response".