Depending on the size of your organization and the nature of its business, a hosted spam filter may be the most suitable solution to prevent spam, phishing emails, spoofed emails and email-driven cyberattacks.
A hosted spam filter is a filtering solution hosted in the cloud. Like other cloud-based applications, a hosted spam filter does not incur capital expense, is infinitely scalable and can be managed from any Internet-connected device.
In addition to these advantages, the software driving a hosted spam filter is updated by the company providing the hosting. This not only saves the disruption of site visits and downtime to update virtual and physical appliances, but also ensures that the spam filtering solution is identifying and quarantining the latest web-borne threats.
Why You Need a Professional Spam Filtering Solution
Spam cost industry billions of dollars each year. Industry experts suggest it takes an average employee four seconds to identify and delete each spam email. For an organization employing 1,000 staff – each receiving just five spam emails each day – this means that it will lose 219 days of productivity each year due to spam email.
A potentially bigger cost to industry comes from the volume of phishing emails, spoofed emails and email-driven cyberattacks that evade detection. Although organizations are strengthening their security defenses with employee online awareness training, statistically it is only a question of time before an employee innocently clicks on a sophisticated spoofed email and infects the organization´s entire network.
A report produced by the Ponemon Institute in 2015 – “The Cost of Phishing and Value of Employee Training” – concluded that the average cost of repairing the damage caused by a successful cyberattack was $1.8 million. That figure failed to include regulatory fines. By comparison, the cost of protecting your organization with a hosted spam filter is around $10.00 per employee per year.
How Hosted Spam Filter Solutions Work
Hosted spam filter solutions work in exactly the same way as virtual and physical appliances. Inbound emails are inspected against lists of senders and their IP addresses to identify those known to have originated from untrustworthy sources. The multi-layered security mechanisms also check for breaches of sender policy frameworks to detect phishing emails and spoofed emails.
Any emails rejected by the filter are quarantined – as are any emails found to have infected attachments or links to compromised websites by anti-virus software. The solution also checks that outbound emails do not contain spam or viruses in order to prevent the organization´s outgoing email servers from being blacklisted by global blacklisting services.
The primary distinctions between a hosted spam filter and other email filtering solutions is that the security mechanisms are always up-to-date, and its cloud-based hosting makes the service simple to implement and manage. Organizations simply have to adjust their mail exchanger (MX) records in order to redirect inbound and outbound traffic to the service provider´s email servers and then manage the solution via a web-based portal.
Evaluating the Best Hosted Spam Filter
Cloud-based spam filtering solutions come in many formats. Some will be better than others at identifying and quarantining spam emails, while others will have more efficient front-line tests such as recipient verification to prevent backlogging. In order to evaluate the best hosted spam filter, organizations should ask service providers the following questions:
- Can the advertised levels of spam detection be verified?
- Will the filter reduce the load on my email server?
- Is there a choice of options for what happens to the spam emails?
- What anti-virus software is used by the hosted spam filter?
- What front-line tests does the filter conduct?
- Is there more than one cloud-based hosting option?
Thereafter, the best hosted spam filter will likely be determined by an organization´s individual situation. If yours is a smaller organization with limited IT resources, a low maintenance overhead may be a consideration. With a cloud based solution no software or hardware investment or maintenance is required.
SpamTitan Cloud – A Professional Spam Filtering Solution for Business
SpamTitan Cloud is a professional spam filtering solution for business. As verified by the leading testing and certification authority – VB Bulletin – SpamTitan blocks 99.97% of unwanted and malicious emails. Due to the solution being hosted in the cloud, emails are filtered and checked for viruses before reaching an organization´s mail server – substantially reducing the load even if the organization opts to have spam email above a certain score tagged and delivered.
Double anti-virus protection is provided by the top-rated Bitdefender and Clam Anti-Virus, while front-line tests such as RBL (Realtime Blackhole Lists), SPF (Sender Policy Framework), Recipient Verification, Greylisting and SMTP Controls prevent delays in the delivery of incoming emails. SpamTitan Cloud can be hosted in our own cloud, but the options exists for larger organizations and MSPs to have the solution hosted in a private cloud or within their own infrastructure.
Due to the advantages that SpamTitan Cloud has over virtual and physical appliances, our hosted spam filter provides protection against unwanted and malicious emails for more than 5,000 customers in more than 120 countries. Many of our customers have been kind enough to write verifiable testimonials about their experience with SpamTitan Cloud. Copies of the testimonials are available on request.
Test the Advantages of SpamTitan Cloud – for Free
We believe that the best way to evaluate any spam filtering solution is to test it in your own environment. In this respect, we invite you to test the advantages of a fully-enabled SpamTitan Cloud hosted spam filter for free for fourteen days. The offer comes with full technical and customer support and with no obligation on you to purchase a license once your trial period has ended.
FAQs
How does a hosted spam filter block malware?
A hosted spam filter blocks malware in two ways. The first is antivirus protection that detects malicious email attachments and sandboxes them for further investigation. The second is “point-of-click” URL analysis that checks each embedded link at the time it is clicked to ensure the destination web page has not been weaponized since the email entered the email system.
Why should I pay for a professional spam filter when there are free options available?
The reason you should pay for a professional spam filter when there are free options available is consumer-grade (free) solutions lack the detection mechanisms needed to identify advanced threats faced by businesses. For example, a professional spam filter will include capabilities such as data loss prevention, point of click URL analyses, and outbound scanning.
Is it possible to get email hosting with spam filtering?
It is possible to get email hosting with spam filtering. Most email service providers, including Microsoft and Google, provide email hosting with spam filtering. The standard of spam filtering has improved in recent years; however, many email threats bypass the spam filtering mechanisms of email service providers. Microsoft, for example, only includes basic protection as standard. Users have to pay extra for more advanced spam filtering mechanisms. For this reason, many businesses choose a third-party provider that can provide equivalent or better protection at a lower cost.
What alternatives are there to hosted spam filtering?
The alternatives to hosted spam filtering are on-premises software or on-premises hardware. On-premises software-based spam filters are generally better than hardware-based spam filters due to the lower management overhead (provided the software is patched and updated automatically by the software provider). There may also be substantial upfront costs when deploying a hardware-based spam filter.
Should I use a cloud spam filter or an on-premises email filtering solution?
Whether you should use a cloud spam filter or an on-premises email filtering solution depends on your business’s requirements. Cloud spam filters and software-based spam filters offer an equivalent level of protection, although the latter tend to be more customizable. On-premises solutions are often better in highly regulated industries and are ideal for any business that has reservations about cloud computing.
Why are software updates in hosted spam filters beneficial for organizations?
Software updates in hosted spam filters are beneficial for organizations because not only is the management overhead of updating the software eliminated; but, if anything goes wrong during an update, it happens at the provider’s end rather than at the organization’s end – thus eliminating potential downtimes (during updates) and disruptions (if an update has to be reversed).
How does spam impact productivity?
Spam impacts productivity significantly. Surveys conducted into the impact of spam suggest an average employee takes about four seconds to identify and delete each spam email. For a company with 1,000 employees receiving five spam emails daily, this equates to a loss of 219 days of productivity each year.
How does a hosted spam filter function?
A hosted spam filter functions by inspecting inbound emails against lists of blacklisted senders and IP addresses, identifying untrustworthy sources. The filter also employs multi-layered security mechanisms, including time-of-click URL analyses, to detect phishing and spoofed emails. Emails detected as threats are rejected, quarantined, or forwarded to the recipient with a warning depending on how the filter’s policies have been configured.
What distinguishes a hosted spam filter from other email filtering solutions?
What distinguishes a hosted spam filter from other email filtering solutions is the way it is deployed. Whereas an on-premises software, hardware, or virtual gateway solution has to be installed on the organization’s network, the deployment process for a hosted spam filter consists of redirecting the organization’s mail exchanger record – a process that takes less than a minute.
What considerations should organizations bear in mind when evaluating hosted spam filters?
The considerations that organizations should bear in mind when evaluating hosted spam filters include the spam detection rate, the false positive rate, compatibility with existing security mechanisms, ease of use and configuration, and technical support. Quite often, it is the organization’s existing skill sets that can influence the decision about which hosted spam filter is most appropriate for the organization’s requirements.
Within minutes you will be filtering your inbound and outbound emails to prevent spam, phishing emails, spoofed emails and email-driven cyberattacks.
