Facts for the UK

Sep 24, 2007 13:35 GMT  ·  By

Spam filters are pretty good to have, especially if you're a large company, receiving a lot of messages daily. Thing is, these filters don't always function the way they should and sometimes dub legitimate e-mails as spam. Companies cannot afford losing business because of a program that fails to sort out messages properly. That's why IT managers also go through the pile of spam received daily - to ensure that no normal e-mail has been netted by the program. Of course, this is not a very complicated process, it doesn't take much skill to tell that the message advertising Cialis is spam and that the one about some business facts regarding your company isn't. It's just that this takes a lot of time, in which these guys could do something else, something that is more useful for the company. This being said, we may conclude that time is money, thus the title.

Mimecast is a web-based e-mail management service provider - from a survey they commissioned which found out that IT managers from the United Kingdom could be spending more than 5 million hours (which is worth more than ₤140 million) just sorting out spam once more, in case the spam-filter didn't do a good enough job. And I guess that if these filters were better, these people wouldn't waste their time with such activities. To be honest, I'm a bit disappointed with the way spam is being fought off in our days. I think that the most annoying thing is not the fact that spam still gets through the net, but that legitimate e-mails get sent to the bulk folder.

So, as you can see, not only malware can thwart businesses, but security measures can do it as well. It's pretty hard to keep a both secure and efficient business. If security measures curb rights too much, then things will get somewhat slower, but if users have too many privileges, then things could get more insecure. There is no perfect way of doing it, there are just more appropriate ways of deploying security, depending on your needs.