Before Investing in an Anti-spam Filter Know What to Look For

 

 

With a high percentage of emails directed at your inbox being spam, a good anti-spam filter is an absolutely vital piece of your email infrastructure. Knowing what to look for can help make the difference between a well-tuned email system, and a crawling mess of spam messages using up storage space and wasting users’ time. Before you go out and install the first anti-spam filter you find, here are some of the key things to consider.

 

Cloud-based or on-premise

There are hosted anti-spam filtering solutions that offer greater economies of scale, making them more affordable than in-house solutions. These can combine anti-spam with anti-malware, and filter out spam and other nasty stuff before it uses up your bandwidth or impacts your server’s storage and performance. The only downsides are that they represent a subscription service with monthly costs, and as an outsourced solution, some admins miss having the on-site control.

 

On-premise solutions are purchased (though they may have monthly or annual subscription costs for updates) so they can be capitalized, and by being in-house, the admins can have total control whenever they want.

 

Choose the solution that works best with your administrative style and costing strategy. If you choose an on-premise solution, make sure you select one that is server based, not client based. The administrative overhead of managing a server at your edge is much lower than trying to administer an agent installed on every client, and the licensing costs will likely be far less as well. Centralizing the anti-spam filter will make it easier to maintain, and will prevent spam messages from taking up space on users inboxes, and on your mailbox servers.

 

Spam detection methods

There are a variety of ways to detect and block spam. No single way is fully effective; you need a product that combines methods for a defense-in-depth approach. Bayesian filtering is a very effective way to detect spam, but it must be ‘trained’ to your environment. Whitelists need to be in place to minimize false positives that could block critical business communications. Keyword lists should also be an option for companies whose business might include words that others would consider spam. Other approaches include SMTP header analysis, blacklists, using SPF records to reduce spoofing, and reputation services. By combining the analysis of these multiple methods you ensure the maximum effectiveness of your anti-spam filter, while minimizing false positives.

 

User self-service

Whitelisting business partners and customers, and checking the quarantine folder for blocked messages, can both become major tasks for the helpdesk. Look for anti-spam filter solutions that offer user self-service, both for adding senders to the whitelist, and for enabling users to release quarantined messages themselves, or by delivering spam to the user’s junk mail folder.

 

Reporting

Today’s management is all about the metrics. Look for an anti-spam filter that includes robust reporting and that includes the ability to use this information in dashboards or for computing SLAs. Spam is one of those problems that no one notices as long as your anti-spam filter is doing a good job, but that becomes a major issue if a spam message slips through.

 

 

Remember, whether cloud-based or on-premise, a good anti-spam filter offers you defense in depth, economical licensing, reduces the administrative overhead, and supports users for routine tasks.

 

This guest post was provided by Ed Fisher on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. More information: GFI email archiving.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The Main Risks Associated with Spam

There was a time when spam was considered little more than an invasive annoyance. It was merely an attempt, albeit an unwanted one, to communicate information about a product or service to as many people as possible. But then hackers saw another opportunity. They decided to use this tool as a means to exploit consumers and businesses.

 

Spam then, can pose considerable risk to the enterprise. But what are the primary issues?

 

Productivity – If we estimate the time that it takes for an employee to evaluate and delete an unwanted email, and multiply that by the number of employees, we begin to see how costly spam is. While this scenario may not represent real dollars spent mitigating the problem, it does translate into productivity losses which can have a financial impact. Time spent dealing with spam is time not spent on company business.

 

Storage Space – Company managed anti-spam solutions typically include one or more servers and software. Some estimates indicate spam accounts for over 90% of email. What this means is that a significant portion of that server space is used to receive and sometimes quarantine suspicious emails. If messages aren’t deleted, space can be easily consumed, forcing the purchase of additional storage space.

 

Security – Unfortunately, many spam messages are sent with the intent to harm the receiver. Clicking on erroneous links or opening infected file attachments can result not only in damage to the computer, but loss of data as well. In an era where privacy laws protect consumer data, the loss may be further compounded by financial penalties and damage to company reputation.

 

Spam can no longer be viewed as a problem of convenience, targeted at potential consumers. Real loss of data, reputation or company services can prove costly. Based on these risks, businesses should invest in solid anti-spam service solutions. To further reduce costs, cloud-based solutions have proved that they are not only up to the task, but will also save your time and money in the process.

 

Additional Resources:

http://www.allspammedup.com/2009/10/taking-control-of-the-risks/

http://www.spamlaws.com/

http://blogs.computerworld.com/16285/outbound_spam_hard_data_illustrates_real_risks

 

This guest post was provided by Veronica Henry on behalf of GFI Software, a leading software developer that produces network and messaging security solutions for SMBs. More information about GFI anti-spam solution can be found at http://www.gfi.com/mes

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Godfather of spam jailed for four years

Alan Ralsky, the so-called “Godfather of spam”, has been sentenced to four years in jail for his role in a stock fraud scheme that earned him $2.7 million during the summer of 2005.

 

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