Survey results recently released in London reveal that Britain`s IT managers are spending on average more than five million man hours a year searching for lost e-mails.
An independent survey carried out by e-Media reveals e-mail is today considered the single most important communication medium in business, but the majority of e-mail filtering systems are wasting huge amounts of IT resources in searching for valid e-mails caught in spam filters that is costing employers over £140 million in staff costs per year.
The survey, commissioned by Mimecast, a provider of Web-based e-mail management services, carried out among more than 100 ICT managers, confirmed that the majority of them (51%) considered e-mail to be the most important communication tool, ahead of the phone with 40% of the vote and postage with just 9%.
The survey also revealed an alarming lack of confidence in the ability of spam filters to distinguish between spam and valuable e-mail traffic: 54% of respondents checked e-mail quarantines at least daily and 22% checked it a few times a week.
The reason for the level of nervousness and time wasted scanning for e-mails that had been incorrectly trapped is clearly evident with 60% of respondents admitting that they had lost legitimate e-mails. These e-mails had been mistakenly caught in spam filters at least once a month and, in many cases more frequently.
"These figures illustrate the inefficiency of the majority of LAN-based and hosted anti-spam solutions available on the market today," commented Peter Bauer, CEO of Mimecast.
"While staggeringly high, the amount of wasted time and lack of trust in existing solutions is not surprising, given the inadequacies of the various content-scoring methods used to identify and categorise spam. What is perhaps surprising is that e-mail filtering products have been around for about a decade but they seem to have evolved less slowly than the ability of the spammers to elude them. IT managers are constantly under pressure to provision a 24x7 spam-free e-mail service and ensure legitimate e-mails are not lost.
"We think this indicates the need for a new innovative approach to e-mail management, one that, like our own, is an on-the wire, real-time solution that blocks e-mails at source and offers 98% protection against spam with no false positives or quarantines."
"One of our customers was locked out of a tender response because their submission was incorrectly classified as spam. Using our system allowed them to check the forensics of the message and where it was delivered, giving them the proof they needed to show the tenderor that the message had in fact been delivered to their mail systems with over a second to spare before the tender cut-off time.
"This got their submission admitted at the eleventh hour and the client actually were awarded the tender. Full value to that customer was around R5 billion rand," added Garth Wittles, MD of Mimecast SA.
For further information, please contact Mimecast RSA: tel 0861 114 063, fax 011 258-5339, e-mail info@mimecast.co.za
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