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Still not sure you whether you should outsource your spam filtering?

Well, over 80% of organizations have had a virus, worm or trojan successfully infiltrate their network through email. Once spam actually reaches an employee’s mailbox, it leaves your entire corporation at the mercy of your employees doing the right thing. While there are some best-practice guidelines you can offer to your employees, leaving this up to your employees is a huge risk because spammers have perfected the art of fooling email recipients.

You’re probably well aware of the benefits of spam protection for your business. Many companies opt to have their antispam protection managed in-house by the IT department. Some think it’s cheaper; others think it’s more reliable, and some simply don’t think of bringing in outside help for the battle against unsolicited email. However, there are several advantages to outsourcing your business’s spam filtering. Let’s take a look at some of these.

1. Greater efficiency in threat management

Malware threats delivered via spam messages can bring a variety of dangers to your business including loss of sensitive/private client or company data. Outsourced antispam protection is typically far more efficient than in-house solutions because:

• They are cloud-hosted services. This means they stop spam before it ever gets to your server or network, therefore, your desktop apps will only receive clean mail. Essentially, you outsource your risk. When attacks are imminent, companies struggle to keep their information and servers safe. Often, companies that are attacked see their email servers being the first in line to be targeted. Other times, companies don’t even have the time to react to attacks. When using a third-party email filtering system, the risk of outsiders attacking servers directly on the company’s network is almost nonexistent. Email threats are cut down at the source leaving only clean communications to go through the company’s servers.
• They use industry-leading encryption and security practices.
• Outsourced antispam offers managed, enterprise-level spam filtering featuring multiple levels of spam, virus, malware, and phishing protection.
• They use multiple, constantly updated, intelligent, self-learning antispam and antivirus engines.
• They use Zero hour antivirus protection that detects and captures new forms of malware and viruses.
• Most third-party spam filtering providers have data centers in multiple geographical locations hence can guarantee very high levels of service.
• Leading spam filters usually require no administration on your part because they are managed by experts in the field of email security. This ensures that they block even the newest virus and other malware threats in ways most in-house systems cannot come close to matching. This means you can avoid the hassles of keeping up-to-date with the latest threats (viruses, malware, trojans, ransomware, phishing ploys), blacklists, and other aspects of the ever-evolving fight against spam.

2. Reduced capital investment

In the past, the idea of a company implementing a solution always came hand in hand with a level of investment in infrastructure, project implementation, customization, and repetitive fine-tuning.

In contrast, with third-party solutions, sometimes called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), a company can acquire the same services but without the investment and overhead of a full implementation.

3. Saving on bandwidth and resources

Ensuring that company data is always protected is never a luxury. Companies take special attention in making sure that downtime, system crashes, and outsider threats are minimized. Managing spam effectively can seriously slow computer functions as all of the processing required to filter spam is a significant, round-the-clock burden. Taking on the responsibility of your own spam filtering means more bandwidth use and more storage space occupied and a lot more CPU required to manage this potential load.

At the same time, investing in high availability and redundancy systems can become a huge expense that negatively affects cash flow, especially if there’s a specific high-availability level that the company is looking to achieve. Companies are in the business of conducting successful operations. They are not in the business of creating data-centers that are highly available and redundant.

By using a third-party provider for your spam filtering, your business can minimize wastage of company resources.

4. Email queuing

If your mail server(s) become unavailable, your email is safe and is queued on your providers’ servers as you remedy the issue that interfered with your server(s). And in some cases, if you are on email archiving, you can get email continuity services. This means you are able to access your emails when your server is unavailable.

5. Easy to deploy

For most outsourced spam filters to work, you do not need to download or install any additional software in your environment.

6. Outbound email filtering/relaying

Your emails are also filtered as they are leaving your organization. This effectively gives protection against legal action and loss of hard-earned brand equity that may result from blacklisting.

7. Can better handle email traffic spikes

Unlike most in-house spam filtering systems, outsourced spam filtering readily scales as needed. A company’s own spam filters are generally not built to handle floods of incoming emails such as those that may be experienced in directory harvest and distributed-denial-of-service attacks. If they are, they are over-built to incorporate capabilities rarely or never used. This is a waste of money and resources.

In contrast, outsourced email security systems are usually prepared to stop onslaughts of spam. This prevents interference with regular email delivery and means internal systems will not be brought to a crawl or to a dead stop.

8. IT staff can focus on more important jobs

Personnel in the IT department can devote time to jobs that relate directly to the company’s goals and objectives.

Conclusion

Smart businesses realize that spam filtering protection isn’t an overhead expense. It is an investment. While a company would certainly be making a smart decision by prioritizing spam protection, it would be shortsighted to view in-house efforts as the best way to fight spam.

By outsourcing spam filtering, an organization can reap greater returns on antispam investments. The business will also keep system resources and networks freed up for more important business matters. It will avoid slowing down systems and networks unnecessarily, prevent wastage of resources and costs associated with worst-case scenario designs, and most importantly, enjoy safer email communication round-the-clock.

Spam filtering is an investment whose returns are better maximized by outsourcing the service.

If you are in the market for a spam-filtering solution, you can join MailSafi. With MailSafi:

Most customers see a return on their investment in just a matter of days!

Whether you are a small business with no IT staff or a large corporate enterprise, you can let us make spam-free inboxes a reality for you. You don’t have to be a large corporate to enjoy enterprise-level solutions. Sign up today and let us take care of your spam problems.

Still not convinced? Take advantage of our MailSafi Email Security Free Trial before making any financial commitment.

Contact us for more information.