SurfControl helps reduce costs of spam management through new IT administration tools

SurfControl, the world`s number one Web and e-mail filtering company, today announced two enhancements to SurfControl E-mail Filter that ease administrative burdens on IT managers and empower managers operating from remote locations to manage and monitor corporate e-mail more efficiently.

SurfControl`s new End-User Spam Management and Report Central tools reduce the IT costs related to managing spam. These tools improve corporate information flow by reducing false positives - or e-mail erroneously identified as spam - and enhancing reporting capabilities.

The costs of managing Spam are enormous, since 60% to 75% of incoming e-mail is spam, according to industry analyst firm, Gartner. Spam drains network resources, and is a major transmitter of malicious code, viruses and other threats that take down entire networks. SurfControl`s e-mail filtering technology combines multiple layers of spam detection and content filtering to protect organisations from the growing risks associated with e-mail communication, including HTML-based spam, viruses and confidential data leakage.

SurfControl`s End User Spam Management and Report Central tools are add-on features that easily integrate with SurfControl E-mail Filter to provide enterprises with two critical features for supporting a robust e-mail management system.

SurfControl`s End User Spam Management eases the management burdens on IT administrators and enables legitimate business e-mail to be delivered faster to end-users.

Employees receive a daily e-mail to inform them that the system has isolated suspect spam e-mail messages that require their review. Designated employees can easily delete or release messages in question. Since individual employees are reviewing e-mails in queue, the capability significantly reduces IT staff time needed to monitor and review messages and lessens the possibility of false positives.

"Enterprises need to minimise barriers to delivering legitimate business communications," said Wayne Bird, Product Director at Networks Unlimited, local distributor of SurfControl. "This new feature empowers IT administrators to decide which employees can delete or release e-mails isolated by the filter. By extending this responsibility to the end-user level, employees are assured that they are receiving all business critical e-mail."

According to a recent survey by the Radicati Group, concern over false-positives is one of the main reasons companies don`t invest in anti-spam products.

"Managing spam across the enterprise is a major drain on IT resources," said Bird. "Organisations need a way to leverage the advantages of intelligent e-mail filtering without losing valuable IT staff time. SurfControl`s new tools will help reduce our costs associated with fighting spam, and improve the flow of communication throughout our organisation. It also allows our staff to focus on more strategic network issues that build value for our customers."

SurfControl Report Central is a Web-based tool that gives enterprise IT administrators in remote locations all of the reporting abilities available back in headquarters. IT managers on the road or in distant offices can automate the scheduling, running and distribution of e-mail management and spam reports to a customised list of recipients. They also can give key managers and employees the ability to monitor and report on spam and other e-mail policy activity, such as confidential data leaks. This helps IT managers efficiently communicate critical network information to key senior executives, managers and employees throughout the corporation.

SurfControl Report Central supports all of the standard and custom reports currently provided in SurfControl E-mail Filter, including individual user reports, time and bandwidth reports and virus scanning and cleansing. Report Central features include:

* A single Web-based interface to provide a view into all SurfControl E-mail Filter reports from any remote location.
* Scheduling and auto-distribution features to support report generation and automated e-mail distribution in a broad range of file formats.
* Authenticated Access Control to Reports to enable administrators to choose which end users have access to run specific reports.
* An improved reporting engine to generate a larger variety of reports more quickly than previous SurfControl E-mail Filter reporting tools.