Strategy

They call it SPAM, you call it a total waste of time.  Recent estimates indicate that 63%[1] of Internet email traffic is considered SPAM and that the annual cost per employee due to lost productivity due to SPAM is $1,400[2]. Here's what you can do about it.

It is the same story for everyone with an email address; you open your email each day to find 10, 20, 30 or 100 messages from people you don’t know (or care to know for that matter) on topics you don’t care about.  It is worse if you have a BlackBerry™ or other handheld device as it reduces the great efficiencies that they once brought.  Is there an end in sight to this productivity drain?

Yes.  Many organizations have developed (anti-)SPAM filtering solutions that allow your email to be reviewed by a server (similar to anti-virus software) before it reaches your inbox.  None of the solutions so far are 100% accurate as SPAM writers are always looking for ways to avoid being caught by SPAM filters.  Each vendor has a slightly different approach to SPAM filtering.  They tend to fall into one of four categories:

1.       ASP Model: Your email address is redirected to a service provider’s server where a centralized server reviews your email electronically and determines if the message is SPAM and either blocks the message or lets it pass through to your inbox.  Many Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are offering this type of service.  Some services are free and others have a cost associated.

2.         Gateway Model: As your email enters your office network it passes through a corporately owned server that acts as an email gateway.  The server reviews each email and assigns it a SPAM rating.  All email continues to your corporate email server where each user can create a rule that will filter emails into other folders (such as Deleted Items or Junk E-mail) based on the SPAM rating.

3.       Integrated Model: Your email (including SPAM) arrives at your corporate email server where a program intercepts the email before it gets to your email box.  All messages are reviewed electronically and based on rules based on a SPAM rating (typically set globally on the server) either places the message directly into your Inbox, directly into your Junk E-mail folder or deletes them entirely.

4.       Desktop Model: Your email arrives at your desktop as usual, however as it enters your Inbox a local program reviews the message and determines if it is SPAM based on your individual settings and filters it into the appropriate folder. 

All of these solutions are better than having no solution at all, however if you are looking for a solution for your office, there are various filtering techniques that should be considered when selecting an effective solution.  One of the best filtering methods is called a Bayesian Filtering.  A few solutions are starting to integrate this method, although mostly those in the Integrated Model category.  This method analyzes your specific trends for sending, reading, and deleting email messages (both corporately and at the individual user level) and builds a customized SPAM filtering scheme for each user.  This method is extremely effective in reducing the number of false positives (messages flagged as SPAM that should not have been) while keeping the number of SPAM messages that arrive in your Inbox to a minimum.

There are some future new IEEE standards being developed for email but these techniques are in testing and waiting for IEEE acceptance and industry adoption. 

Email is consuming an increasingly large portion of corporate users’ time.  Keep this time to a minimum, improve productivity and your network security by implementing an (anti-) SPAM filtering solution for your corporate email.

Scott Murphy is a Consultant at Data Perceptions. Scott helps companies select best available technologies to meet their business requirements.  Scott’s education, IT and business experience allow him to understand clients’ needs and translate them into solutions.