How To Control SPAM In Your Organization

I know it is annoying isn’t it? Every time you open your email to check out important messages what you find is a long list of unwanted messages and you spend three quarters of the time clearing the long list of trash. Most of us have actually gotten accustomed to the idea that every time we open up our email, we are always prepared to find a huge bunch unwanted messages which add no value to our lives and the only thing they do is waste our time and make it difficult to locate the important messages. Perhaps most of us are partly responsible for the amount of spam that is showing up in our mail, especially after subscribing to endless mailing lists from all our favorite websites and blogs. Mailing lists are always an easy target for spammers to get hold of your information and start spamming your email. Despite this, we all have a right to choose who or not is able to access our email and send us messages every now and then. If anyone is constantly flooding your mail with unwanted messages without your consent, it is tantamount to an infringement on your rights and legally, it is a crime.

Can we control the amount of spam in our mail?

The answer is YES, and I`m a living testimony that you can actually greatly reduce spam. I know the question that is lingering on most people`s minds is, “how can you do that?” The answer to that is simple- safeguard your personal information.

Most people have a 2 email addresses; one is a business email address and the other is personal. My personal email address is usually flooded with spam which often bores me to death, but I’m partially responsible for that. Being a personal email address, I often subscribe to entertainment blogs and websites with it, so that they can constantly keep me updated with new content. This has therefore always exposed that particular email address, and keeping off spam has now becomes a wild goose chase.

On the contrary, my other email address rarely has any spam; as a matter of fact, it could take weeks before I find any spam emails. This may be highly attributed to the fact over the years, I have managed to safeguard my business email address and sort of shield it from anyone and anything I do not trust. However, despite my efforts, I have not been able to completely keep off spam, which clearly shows that you need to do more than just giving your email to trusted sources in order to keep away from spam.

How can you protect your organization from spam?

Not having open proxies– open proxies will always compromise your servers, thus exposing user information to the public. Having a closed proxy is often considered as an expensive endeavor, but it always pays off in the long-run because you will share out confidential mails in the organization without the constant fear of the information leaking to outsiders. Once you have closed proxies, it becomes hard for spammers to access your employees’ company email addresses, which will greatly help in keeping off spam.

Investing in spam filters– spam filtering is another way of dealing with spam. It is not entirely the best way of dealing with spammers, because it means that they are still able to access your organizations email system, but it is much cheaper compared to closed proxies; but only in the short-run. It is more of a curative approach, instead of going for the more rewarding preventive approach. Spam filters are able to filter out unwanted mail, such that employees will only get relevant and appropriate emails. However, you need to constantly update the spam filters if you want to be on the safer side, because spammers will always find a way of compromising the existing filters.

Operating your organizations email system via cloud– whether it is private or public cloud, cloud offers one of the safest ways to run your organization’s email system. Depending on your subscribed package, public clouds are cheaper and also come with additional advantages such as automatic system upgrading and 24/7 monitoring. Their advanced hardware and software investment also takes away common inefficiencies such as downtime and traffic influx meaning that everyone in the organization will have a great time using the system. Thus, there will be instant delivery of sent mail, prompting instantaneous feedback from the recipient, which thus introduces efficiency into the organization`s operations. This method is often referred to as hosted spam filtering, and is actually what most big brands are currently using to control spam. The people operating hosted cloud systems are experts who have over the years learnt how to think like spammers, and they are therefore always 2 steps ahead of spammers.

On the other hand, a private cloud might be a bit expensive to operate compared to a public cloud, but it gives you more control options. This therefore means that you can upgrade your security firewalls based on the level of security you desire. Secure servers will make it harder for spammers to access your organization`s email system, which is very beneficial because it is a preventive approach. Additionally, the number and capacity of servers operating on your cloud will also depend on your needs. Thus, if you want more traffic control and speed, you can invest in advanced servers. Perhaps the best thing about private clouds is the fact that you can now have a department which solely deals with spam in your organization’s cloud. They monitor spam traffic on a regular basis and are thus able to recognize any loopholes which might be responsible for the leaking spam.

Spam may easily be considered as a modern technology pandemic, and the best way to deal with it is through preventive measures such as cloud spam filtering.