Many business owners look at email SPAM like the junk mail we get in our regular “snail mail” mailbox - they just think it’s a fact of life that they have to deal with. Some of you may already have used email SPAM filtering already in your business and still get junk coming through.
But SPAM is more than just an annoyance. It can include dangerous phishing emails, drag down productivity, cause delays in responses to critical messages, and put your network in danger of a breach.
Email is usually the most important cloud service at any company. It takes up more work time than any other software (on average, people spend 28% of their workday handling email). Because email has such a big impact on your team and their daily tasks, keeping SPAM at bay using an email filtering is one of the most impactful improvements you can make on efficiency & security.
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What does Email SPAM Filtering do?
Email SPAM filtering is a system that will identify advertising emails, phishing emails, and legitimate emails and sort them accordingly. It will typically send unwanted mail like phishing or SPAM to a “SPAM” or “quarantine” folder, so it is not mixed in with your other email. SPAM filtering will typically need to be trained when you first begin using it to help it recognize mail you want from mail you don’t want.
For example, you may want those advertising emails from Staples coming in so you can use the coupons, but not want advertisements from other senders. You can train a SPAM filter by designating a particular sender and message as “SPAM” and the filter will remember that for the next time they send you anything and filter the message accordingly. You can also ensure that important messages aren’t accidentally sent to a SPAM folder by designating “approved senders” as those you want to receive in your inbox.
Benefits of Email SPAM filtering
Using an email SPAM filter for your company email accounts is important for a number of reasons.
Some numbers for you…
91% of all attacks begin with a phishing email to an unsuspecting victim. Check out our previous blog on how to spot phishing emails here.
In 2021, 83% of organisations experienced a successful email-based phishing attack in which a user was tricked into risky action (such as clicking a bad link, downloading malware, providing credentials, or even executing a bank transfer).
With ransomware, the average ransom paid in 2021 was £144,000.
“Doesn’t Office 365 have built-in protection?”
Somewhat, yes. It has a level of filtering in place, and there is also an extra license we recommend for the 365-suite called Microsoft Defender. However, it does not offer all of the features that dedicated email filters. With most customers, we recommend both Microsoft Defender and a third-party SPAM filter.
Being a dedicated solution, 3rd party products sanitise email traffic before they arrive at Microsoft 365 and provides protection against more threats than Microsoft. Whilst we utilise Microsoft solutions heavily at EPX, we go with the best tool for the job and independent tests are showing the Microsoft filtering products as good, but still nowhere near as good as the competition.
What does EPX recommend?
Ideally, you’d have both Microsoft ATP and a 3rd-party SPAM filter. However, if there are budgetary concerns then our top recommendation is a 3rd-party SPAM filter.
We can have a conversation with you if you’d like to know more, we can make recommendations for SPAM filtering and we can discuss your email security strategy as a whole. Just get in touch and we will guide you through the process.JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJzbGlkZUJ1dHRvbiUyMiUyMGNsYXNzJTNEJTIyc2lkZS1idXR0b24lMjIlM0VDb250YWN0JTIwVXMlMjBUb2RheSUyMSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRQ==
