Fighting Spam

Spam is not only a nuisance and a drain on IT resources, but the greatest security threat to a company’s network.

There are currently three well known levels of spam prevention available on the market.

Desktop level, Server level and Network level. The best choice for your business will be dependent on the current threats, the size of your company, the number of resources available and of course, your budget.

Desktop Level

The first, most basic, and widely known is desktop level protection. Popular products such as Norton Internet Security, Kaspersksy Mail protection and Outlook (using the Junk email feature) fight spam at your PC. i.e. on the desktop.

This method is the easiest to implement, and for an organisation with a small number of PCs, also the quickest and most cost effective. If you are already using Microsoft Office and have purchased a product such as Norton for your antivirus protection, you will already be taking advantage of some spam fighting tools.
Spam rules are normally very flexible, and give the user great power in controlling exactly how the spam is dealt with.

For companies with 25 PCs or more, installing and managing, spam fighting/prevention software on each pc individually can become quite laborious, and difficult to manage for in-house IT staff.

Due to the fact that the spam is being dealt with at the desktop, it also means that it creates a heavy workload on the company’s mail server and network. This can create additional costs due to increased bandwidth, and through paying for extra support either via outsourcing, or due to in-house support engineer time.

Cost summary
Normally around £25-40(approx) per pc, and products require to be upgraded just once a year.

Server Level

The more popular method with companies with between 10-100 PCs, server level spam protection, as the name suggests deals with spam on the actual mail server behind the company’s firewall, before it reaches the desktop.

It has its obvious advantages: giving room to centralised management of all desktops, reducing the threat to internal PCs. Computers can be updated with the latest spam definitions on a regular basis, and can be monitored for spam activity.

This of course requires some amount of in-house expertise. Companies without in-house IT support will struggle to maintain such a spam prevention infrastructure. Spam rules are available but can be a little more complex to implement then their desktop counterpart.

Some vendors provide software based solutions which can be installed on the mail server, such as GFI with their ‘mail essentials’ product. Microsoft is currently making good headway with its Microsoft Forefront suite of products due to its re-aligned security focus. Real world long term tests are yet to be seen.

Other vendors provide hardware appliances, which can in fact be slightly easier to manage, and do not require any software installation whatsoever.

Cost summary
Software products:  Normally around £600 (approx) per server, for up to 25 PCs.
Hardware appliances: Normally around £1200(approx)

Network Level

Currently the IT Service Provider’s preferred method of spam protection for many reasons.
Network level protection deals with spam before it reaches the client’s network.  This means no increase in bandwidth costs, and a heavily reduced threat to the company’s network.

Home users have had the benefits of network level protection for some time with introductions from Hotmail, AOL and other popular ISPs. Most spam is filtered before it reaches the clients mailbox. Spam definitions are updated much more regularly and spam rules can be almost as, if not just as, flexible as desktop based solutions.

Many messaging providers now offer network level spam protection as a managed service. This means, not only is your company’s spam load reduced greatly, but specialist expertise and support is available where and when necessary. Most specialist providers currently have a success rate of greater than 97% and now provide many other benefits, such as email backup, spam statistics and email disclaimers.

Network level protection, ultimately results in much simplified management, with no requirement for in-house expertise and is available at a cost comparable to their desktop counterparts with many added advantages.

Cost summary
£700 annually (approx) for up to 15 users.

XS-PRO currently maintains a strong partnership with its messaging provider partner, and can help your company reduce its spam payload greatly. Click here to learn more.