Spam, or unsolicited e-mail, has become an accepted annoyance for any business that uses e-mail as a communication tool. Businesses accept the risk and take steps to minimise it; the problem is that the steps taken aren't always effective or, perhaps even worse, they are too effective - all at the cost of your business.
According to market research in 2005, spam accounts for around 45% of all e-mail. If you think that is unacceptable, statistics show that between 70-90% of all e-mails sent to SME businesses are unsolicited.
It is estimated by leading anti-spam experts that SME businesses could be footing a bill for between £1000 and £19,000 per annum in lost user productivity and server storage because of spam. The cost of spam doesn't stop there; phishing (fraud) scams and viruses are rife, often embedded into or attached to unsolicited mail.
At this cost, can businesses still afford to consider spam an acceptable annoyance and are the steps they take to protect themselves enough?
The predicament most SME businesses are in is that, although they employ an anti-spam solution, they are either still receiving too much spam or blanket blocking a large amount of legitimate senders, such as potential customers.
SME businesses require dependable, scalable and manageable anti-spam solutions with the ability to have a per user spam quarantine that individuals can query themselves in order to retrieve blocked emails. These solutions need to be updated automatically on a daily basis in order to stay on top of the ever increasing spam wave and have the capability to learn what is and isn't spam from the way users interact with the solution.
One such product is the Barracuda Spam Firewall range, which boasts anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-phishing and DoS (Denial of Service) protection all in one box. With daily quarantine updates per user, which includes the ability to retrieve legitimate e-mails, the days of users ringing IT departments in order to recover blocked messages are over.
With multiple layers of defence the Barracuda possesses a proven track record with some of the leading corporations in the world; Barracuda is leading the anti-spam market. This has recently been recognised once again with Barracuda's founders being awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® Award.
Spam is an ever increasing problem with very real cost implications for SME businesses. Unfortunately, no 'silver bullet' exists but with the right solution your business can stand up to spam, ensure business integrity and truly minimise the risk and cost.
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