Is there a perfect ANTI-SPAM solution? Well, no. No system is perfect. Spam will get through and legitimate email will get tagged as junk. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep fighting! Below are three effective methods for filtering spam. The first is a service, the second is software that runs on your server, and the third is a spam firewall.
There are two general methods when dealing with spam, use a service to filter your mail before it even reaches your network or filter it once it gets to your network. After signing on with a spam filtering service you change the pointer that tells the world where to deliver your E-mail so that mail is first delivered to the filtering service. The service then resends the mail, less the quarantined messages, on to your network.
The biggest advantage of a filtering service is that the junk mail never makes it to your network, so it won’t eat away at disk space, bandwidth or processing power. If 60% of your mail is junk, that’s a lot of time the server spends trying to process it. Much of it in vain, since you’ll receive messages from non-existent users and your server will try to send an undeliverable message back to the non-existent sender.
Filtering services are generally independent of which computer system you run. It doesn’t matter if you have a mail server in your office or if you outsource it. Finally, a filtering service saves you the hassle of updating and maintaining software on your server. You simply pay a monthly fee and the filtering is taken care of. HLP resells a service called Katharion, which filters messages for as little as $1.75 per mailbox per month for 10-24 mailboxes.
The biggest disadvantage is maintaining two separate email lists; one on your in-house server and one at the filtering service. If you are constantly changing employees and creating or deleting E-mail accounts, this may be a hassle. Some other disadvantages will become clear when I discuss an in-house filter, so let’s continue!
Let’s say you prefer controlling your own servers and would rather handle the spam filtering in house. If you are running an Exchange Server, we’ve found GFI MailEssentials a simple inexpensive way to do just that. Since the program runs right on your server, you don’t need to maintain a separate E-mail list for your spam filter, it will use Microsoft’s Active Directory. Another big advantage is GFI’s ability to create a whitelist (or safe senders list) based on E-mails sent. For example, if you send an E-mail to bob@company.com, Bob’s E-mail automatically gets white-listed and will never be tagged as spam (even if Bob tries to sell you on a penny stock scam!)
A little patience is required when you first install GFI’s software. It uses a Bayesian filter to “learn” what is spam and what is not spam, by collecting messages sent by your users (you can also help it along by dropping messages into the legitimate or this is spam box.) After a few weeks the software will know what is spam and what’s not and the Bayesian filtering will start working. GFI’s software starts at only $450 for up to 25 users.
If you still want to control spam in house but don’t want it reaching your mail server, a spam firewall box, such as the one from Barracuda Networks, sits in front of your network to filter spam before it reaches your mail server. This methods still keeps you in control, but takes the load of your server, plus it is OS independent and requires no software modifications on your E-mail server. The Barracuda Spam Firewall is pricier than the GFI software ($3,999 for the 400 model) but less than many other hardware anti-spam solutions on the market. And it is practically plug and play with little management.
Spammers are getting more devious in their sending methods. 63 billion junk messages are sent a day. Your network probably got a few of those. Before your delete key breaks off, consider getting serious about fighting spam by utilizing one of these solutions. If you’d like more information on these or other solutions to your spam, please give us a call today!
Michael Tanney
Product Manager
HLP Associates, Inc.
www.hlp.net
