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By David Kelleher
Unsolicited email, or spam as it is more commonly referred to, is a problem for companies. This is because it has the ability to change regularly and flood mailboxes with useless emails and it can be a security risk.
Over the past two years, companies have seen an increase in spam volumes and types and this is a reflection of the success registered by spammers in gaining access to servers and end-users’ mailboxes and, more importantly, the capability to bypass the various methods used by anti-spam products to detect these emails.
Why spam
Spammers are not interested in sending out millions of emails just for the fun of it, but they are using spam to gain information from gullible end-users, to send out fake but highly convincing emails encouraging people to purchase products and to part with their money.
They are also using spam to get people to click on website links within the email that take the user to a website that contains malicious material aimed at taking over that person’s computer.
But the major concern is the loss of productivity and money due to spam. Estimates suggest that up to 90% of email received by companies is spam. This means that employees must dedicate part of their work time to dealing with spam, which results in a decrease in productivity.
Loss of productivity is the main cost of spam, because so much spam is received every day. There is also the cost of bandwidth taken by spam, as well as other storage and network infrastructure costs.
With the influx of spam and its deletion, an important message could accidentally be trashed along with the unsolicited mail in the rush to clear one’s inbox of junk mail.
Dealing with spam
This can be done in three ways:
* Delete any spam that looks suspicious and to ignore emails asking for personal details.
* Employees should also not be allowed to install unauthorised software and they should be denied access to peer-to-peer sites so as to avoid machines becoming infected viruses.
* The third method is to install the best of breed product that is capable of identifying as many forms of spam as possible yet without deleting email that is important. The test for any anti-spam solution is to identify spam and allow genuine email to pass through the filters.
The writer is a Communications and Research Analyst at GFI, a leading U.S based
developer of Network security, Content security and messaging solutions.
Features of an anti-spam product
An anti-spam product must have the following:
* First, choose a product that battles spam at server level rather than at client level. A server-based product offers the following advantages:
1. Installation on the server eliminates the need for workstation based anti-spam software.
2. It is cheaper to license.
3. Spam is stopped at the entry point of the company’s network and not each end-users’ mailbox.
* Second, choose a product that uses multiple technologies.
A solution that only identifies spam using keywords is bound to fail because spammers have adapted their techniques to bypass traditional methods of detection. Today they are using image spam, audio files, common office documents, etc to gain access to mailboxes. Thus, companies need an all-round solution that offers second generation Bayesian filtering — a mathematical method that allows the software to ‘teach’ itself what is spam — as well as whitelists, intelligent mail header analysis, checking senders against custom blacklists and public blacklists such as ORDB or SpamHaus and others.
* Third, choose a product that returns few false positives.
The worst nightmare for an administrator is to use a product that also deletes important and critical business emails. The test for any anti-spam product is to reduce spam as much as possible but with the lowest return of false positives.
How GFI MailEssentials tackles spam
GFI MailEssentials has been independently verified to stop more than 98% of spam. This is achieved using a number of key methods and technologies:
1. Tackles spam at the server level.
2. Analyses the content of the mail using Bayesian filtering and uses ham data specific to your company.
Published on: Saturday, 16th August, 2008
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