Spammers Get Smarter by the Second

Every week I am asked about solutions to prevent spam. I am also questioned about why the sudden increase in spam in recent weeks. Computer Reseller News has a great column about why spam is on the increase and the costs organization incur in lost productivity and employing means to stop the spam.

http://www.crn.com/security/224202449;jsessionid=20XRD5EP2MUNRQE1GHOSKHWATMY32JVN?pgno=1

Today there are several methods being employed to prevent spam from entering e-mail inboxes. Some are cloud based, some software, others are hardware and some are a hybrid of all the above.

An example of Cloud prevention would be when a company has their e-mail auto routed to a 3rd party who scans the e-mail for spam, eliminating it before forwarding the e-mail to the IP address of the company's mail server or gateway. This alleviates a company from having to deploy software/hardware themselves but requires a monthly fee based on number of users. In the case of a large organization with an Exchange Server, this solution prevents all that spam from ever reaching the Information Store which has storage limits.

A software solution would be any of the anti-virus/spyware/spam software which scans your e-mail as it comes into your e-mail client/server and places it into a folder separate from the inbox. One could have the e-mail automatically deleted however this is not an ideal choice since good e-mail invariably becomes swept up with the bad sometimes. The main con with these programs is that most are resource intensive and maintenance has to be performed on each machine.

Last is the hardware solution that monitors incoming e-mail at the gateway. This is a good solution that prevents the spam from reaching individual inboxes like the cloud solution but it requires upfront hardware costs and generally a subscription to maintain up to date filtering definitions.

Spam today is being employed for more sinister purposes including download of rogue ware, zombie bot-nets and phishing, all this along with the usual pharmaceutical, Russian Bride and Acai Berry scams that are received each day.

No matter which of these solutions that are employed, one still has to pore through the junk e-mail to guard against valid e-mails from being caught in the spam filters. With the Cloud solution one would log into a website and check the junk mail. The software solution creates a junk e-mail folder that has to be monitored within the user’s mailbox or PST file. The hardware solution would provide a folder either internally or on a server that users would have to monitor to make sure legit e-mails are not being caught.

The costs are high, in addition to monitoring the junk folder, users have to be added to safe senders list and the spam that does slip through has to be added to the blocked lists.

Please contact us today about a solution that is right for you.

Phil Gilbert
Driving Force Software
dforce@drivingforce.net
www.sonicwall.com/us/