As if the benefits of blocking spam e-mail are not already apparent, companies should consider the potential financial implications of ignoring spam filtering altogether.
Spam is undoubtedly one of the worst problems to hit the Internet-connected community, second only to the recent spate of virus infections and cyber fraud. On average, some 600 000 instances of spam are detected on a daily basis, as opposed to around 1 000 virus attacks per month.
According to Alison Biddulph, system security advisor at Business Connexion`s newly-formed Microsoft competency, around 70 million spam messages can be sent in one single "attack", which can take between six and eight hours.
"It goes one step further," she says. "Spammers are able to hijack computers and entire domains to spoof the e-mail`s origin, which is making huge holes in traditional spam and content filtering tools."
Apart from the obvious problems caused by spam, which include bandwidth issues, reduced employee productivity and an increased need for storage space, spam messages are also becoming more of a danger than a nuisance.
Spammers can often embed virus code or spyware into the body of spam e-mails to gain unlawful access to infected PCs or steal information about users.
This means that companies are facing some difficult challenges when it comes to protecting networks against spam.
Spam often falls into a grey area with regard to definition. "Basically, what is spam to one person is not necessarily spam to another person," she says. She adds that not all commercial e-mails are spam.
"This is prompting businesses to involve their employees more in the spam protection process. More responsibility is being placed with users rather than the ICT department, or even the ISP, to identify what is legitimate communication and what is spam."
Biddulph says it is important to treat spam filtering in the same way as any other part of the business: as a process. While only forming a small part of the entire system, spam filtering should, like any other piece of ICT, add value to the business and not be deployed for the sake of technology.
Similarly, businesses should make educated decisions about which technologies to roll-out and whether the functionality meets their needs.
"Thus far," Biddulph says, "the most successful method of prevention is the use of Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD) technology as this eliminates false positives (ie non-spam messages being blocked because of a general rule)."
While technologies such as heuristic, bayesian and content filtering (used in many of the popular Internet security products) work to a greater or lesser degree, Biddulph comments, the chances of valid messages being blocked as spam are much higher.
Spam filtering is now being recognised as a valuable addition to any business`s security portfolio.
Industry analyst IDC says the effective roll-out of spam filtering technologies can save a business comprising 5 000 users up to US$780 000 in services and technical problems and reduce the amount of time employees spend on e-mail by as much as 50%.
Also, spam is growing at an alarming rate and it is not going to go away any time soon, so Biddulph concludes that businesses should put effective measures in place and adopt a culture of treating spam filtering as part of the entire business process to avoid spending more money than is necessary.
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