Email spam is increasing at an alarming rate. According to SecureList report, the third quarter of 2016 saw a 3.03% increase in spam in comparison to last year. Majority of the spam contain a malicious attachment that downloads ransomware on computers. Hence, businesses need to employ good anti-spam solution to counter this threat. Here are a few benefits of using anti-spam solutions.

Benefits of an Email Spam Filter

Spam emails cause a lot more than inconvenience. They hamper the productivity of workforce as employees spend their valuable time sifting through mail inboxes and deleting spam. By using anti-spam solution you can prevent spam from reaching inboxes which will increase the productivity.

Also, according to Cyberoam 2014 report, there are more than 54 billion spam messages are sent every day and the number keeps increasing. If you do not have email spam filter, a large volume of spam entering your network will hog bandwidth and reduce the efficiency of your email server. With a good anti-spam filter in place, the spam will not enter your organization network and save bandwidth for legitimate traffic.

There are so many different types of anti-spam solutions available in the market and the big question is how do you select the right one for your business. Here are some of the important features that you need to look for while selecting an email spam filter.

Effective Spam Filtering

The email spam filter needs to be effective in blocking 90% or more spam mail and save bandwidth and all incoming mail should be scanned automatically. IP reputation filtering is a useful technology that helps in identifying 80% of mails even without looking at contents of the emails.

The IP filtration method uses an IP-based blocklist offered by IP reputation services who gather information about IP addresses that were used by spammers. The IP address list is distributed to anti-spam solutions using the BGP routing protocol. Using this IP address list, the email spam filtering can block mail coming from these IP addresses.

The email spam filter should be based on “cocktail approach” where multiple detection tests and techniques are used to filter spam. This approach is highly effective as spammers cannot fool all anti-spam tests at a time.

Virus Detection

A large amount of spam contains viruses and other malware that can hamper your system and steal data. The email spam filter should have virus detection software that should scan email before it reaches inbox and delete it. Also, it should be able to scan attachments and detect viruses and delete them as well.

The email filter should have signature less virus detection technology that closes early hour virus vulnerability gap during massive virus outbreaks. It protects your email server against the initial peak of attack. The benefit of this technology is clear- no need to perform signature updates.

Easy Management of White and Black Lists

Though you have email spam filter installed, you should have complete control over white and black email lists. You only decide which email is legitimate and which is spam. The spam emails go in the blacklist while legitimate email goes in the whitelist.

The email spam filter should automatically add all email addresses in your Address book in whitelist. The list should get updated whenever you add any email address in your Address book.

Outage Protection

The anti-spam filtering solution should offer outage protection for uninterrupted email communication. In an event of an outage, the anti-spam solution should be able to receive all emails and once your email server is back online, it should deliver all emails to your server automatically.

Quarantine Reports

Weekly quarantine reports will enable you to analyze a number of spam messages stopped by the email spam filter. It will help you visualize the spam threats and increase the filtering rules based on findings.

Email Recovery

The email spam filter should have an option to move any mail to quarantine folder to judge its legitimacy. The email recovery option should allow you to check and recover legitimate emails from the quarantine folder and delete the spam automatically after a few days.

An email spam filter protects your organization from annoying spam emails. By focusing on important features, you can ensure your organization enjoys the highest level of protection against spam and the anti-spam solution offers you good value for money.

How do you protect your organization from spam? Please feel free to comment.