A study by the European Union in 2001 reported that SPAM costs Internet users $10B per year.

72% of virus infections are delivered by email.

Most Trojans that open back doors for later use are delivered by email and are difficult for virus detection programs to isolate.

In an average company 20-25% of total email from outside the company is SPAM and this translates into higher costs for

• bandwidth,
• disk storage on the mail server,
• degraded performance of the mail server due to processing,
• seriously degraded performance on the mail server due to virus checking on the gateway,
• increased IT labor costs related to increased load,
• decreased productivity for each user to identify and delete SPAM.

 In addition to these real costs, there are indirect costs related to:

• Increased risk of virus and worms that virus checker won’t catch
• Solicitations to inappropriate web sites using temporary IP address that content filters may not catch.
• Attractive nuisance web sites that may lure users to sites they would never go to without encouragement
• General distractions and HR issues

There are 4 general solutions:

• A filter on each PC
• A filter in the mail server
• A filter near the mail server
• A filter before the mail enters your domain.

Each of these has trade-offs with benefits and problems that are totally defined by the size, politics and technical approach of your organization.

If you want help matching the solutions to your operation

Ask questions at nospam@firstnetsecurity.com or call

Steve at 972-738-6900 x120