Do you find many junk/ spam emails hitting your inbox? Do you have to dig deep into your inbox to find the relevant and important emails? Are you worried all of this is consuming your productive time?

Apart from eating into your productive time, Junk email, spam email carries serious threat to the credibility or even the existence of your organization; the content of such email contains malware, phishing material and other types of viruses, which attack your computer networks and compromise the security of your organization’s confidential data. Well, using email filtering is the solution to saving time and protecting your organizations data.

Email filters offer great features to help you fight spam and other phishing emails. These powerful tools come with great features that help you block or direct emails coming from specific email address go to certain folders, or completely block emails coming from a certain domain altogether. You can also set the filtering levels as low, medium, or high. Against to the saying one-size fits all, there may not be an email filter that applies to all your requirements, you will have to choose the right filter based on your organization’s specific requirements and the features the filters offer. Some of the features that these filters offer include:

• Filter Settings: The best Email filter software should have amazing capabilities to block any suspicious looking email, so it does not enter and contaminate your inbox. Some of the best email filters come with a host of features such as white lists, black lists, settings for community and forums, settings based on sensitivities, response and challenge techniques to help you fight spam. With these features, you will be able to quarantine or completely block any virus, malware, etc. you can also get email filters that help you block email by IP addresses, country of Origin, server, etc.

• Accounts covered: You need to make sure the email filter you subscribe to is capable of offering protection to all the users in your organization. Your organization may have multiple users with different accounts all of which requires strong protection against viruses, spam, malware, or other types of phishing attack emails. The best email filter software will have sophisticated technique to identify any attack to steal your users, customer’s sensitive information including personal or banking related information.

• Compatibility: When selecting an email filter for your organization, you need to make sure that it is compatible with the current version of the email client that you have deployed. In general, the best email filters available support all types of email clients and Web Mail service providers such as outlook express, thunderbird, and similar application including POP3/SMPT. They also offer support for web-based application including Gmail, yahoo mail, Hotmail, etc.

• Flexibility: The best email filters understand the importance of personalization. An organization should have the options to change the settings easily to suit their specific needs. The best email filters will offer flexible rules so any user of an organization with any level of technical competency can easily change the settings to suit their changing requirements.

Well, most email filters available come with all these features, however looking for the best software you need to verify a few factors such as:

• Verify the rate of spam and virus protection to see if it meets the standards as advertised by the vendor.

• If the spam filters are compatible with all the operating systems, and especially with the ones that your organization uses.

• What Anti-virus software does the email filter employ to protect your inbox from outside attacks? How effective is this anti-virus software?

• The best email filter also helps you with an option to verify the recipient. Make sure that the software you chose such a capability.

• What is the error percentage in the functioning of the software? For example does the software quarantine any relevant and important mails in an error, if so, what is the rate of such instances?

• Testimonials from previous clients are very important. Verify if the vendor can show references from previous clients who can vouch for the effectiveness of the email filter software.

Finally, customer service is the crucial factor in all purchase decisions. Professional email filter software vendors offer excellent support and help clients with any issue that they may face using such filters. Consider all such factors, and any other factors that your organization may require specifically, to make sure you get the software that scores well on all parameters and not just on one or two.