2008 is expected to be the first year that spam email volumes are expected to exceed person-to-person email volumes sent worldwide.
One survey claims that 11% of all Internet users have made a purchase through unsolicited email . Essentially, unless our consumer behaviour changes, spam is here to stay.
Lots of spam means lots of spam management. For most administrators the headache is not just trying to stem the tide of spam, but making sure the technologies and policies they have put in place don’t
impede their ability to manage IT issues such as email retention requirements, archiving and discovery criteria.
One of the issues with anti-spam technology is that it is largely performed at the main ingress point where the message is about to enter the corporate network, by which time the cost of carriage has
already been billed. Another issue has been the use of content scoring mechanisms to identify spam which spits out lots of false positives. All of these place a higher burden of administration and
cost on organisations.
So, what is one to do? Change. Adapt the attitude to spam. It’s not about the content anymore.
By employing an advanced reputation management system built on cross referencing, combined with custom developed applications andalgorithms, Mimecast uses an On Wire approach to spam. The result is zero content-based false positives and a 100% virus protection
record.
The only way to fight a technology war is with technology. Until users wise up to the ever-increasing cunning of the spammers, companies will need to rely on software that can do the thinking for
them.
By Dr. James Blake, Chief Product Strategist of Mimecast UEM
All you can really do these days is use a good spam filter like SpamBully or spam bayes. The laws don’t seem to be making much of an impact. And new new technologies to prevent the stuff.
Marty, as a corporate user there are many solutions out there that can offer >90+ spam capture rates, however, I strongly recommend looking at Cisco’s IronPort range of carrier-class appliance solutions. Many ISPs and Enterprise customers around the World have successfully deployed IronPort to combat the ever increasing and sophisticated levels of spam.