What is Spam?

Email has become the subject of much abuse in the form of spamming and email worm programs. Both of them flood the inboxes of email users with junk emails, which wastes user time and money and often carries offensive, fraudulent, or damaging content.

The continuing increase in spam has resulted in rapid growth in the use of spam filter solutions. As such, the SecPoint Anti-Spam module has been precision engineered to stop email abuse and ensure that email continues to be usable in the face of these threats. 

This spam filtering solution examines incoming email, separating spam from genuine email messages. Unwanted email can be filtered at the desktop, the network email server/email gateway, or the Internet Service Provider's email gateway. One method of handling the problem for the whole network is the use of a hardened email security appliance designed to intercept both spam and viruses.

SecPoint has chosen to use the award-winning SpamAssassin as its Spam Filter solution. This is a very strong anti-spam engine with more than a 97% catch rate for spam. SpamAssassin has been rated as one of the best anti-spam engines in the world.

Reasons for using an anti-spam appliance instead of a software-only solution could include:

• The customer prefers to buy hardware rather than software.

• Ease of installation.

• Operating system requirements (e.g., your company policy requires Linux, but the software is not available under this operating system).

• Independence of existing hardware.

How Does the Anti-Spam Module Work?

Many techniques and configurations are combined to ensure the highest catch rate and lowest amount of false positives. Among them are:

• Pointing system that counts all words in a mail and gives it points that determine whether it's spam or not. The user can fine-tune the point level as well.

• The user can also choose to enable a high amount of black lists with different language preferences.

• Manual fine-tuning and configuration based on your network setup.

• Individual user login to manage the spam quarantine.

• Monthly updates to the latest SpamAssassin versions.

Spam Filters

Spam filtering, otherwise known as email filtering, is a process wherein a special software or hardware filter organizes the incoming messages of your inbox according to the specified criteria that you, the user, have specified. More often than not, the procedure refers to automatic email processing via software or hardware filters, but it eventually became applicable to sent emails as well as incoming ones and human intelligence intervention that had been integrated with standard anti-spamming techniques.

Typical spam filter features include removal of unsolicited mail (hence its name) and computer viruses or other malicious code that's attached to a message. These programs are infrequently employed to analyze outgoing emails as well by some corporations in order to guarantee that staff and workers aren't doing anything illegal with company resources. Then there are users who utilize these filters to prioritize important messages from unimportant ones or to better manage their email by sorting them into folders based on subject matter or other stipulations. For a supposedly one-trick-pony application, the spam filter is a lot more versatile than it initially seems.

Spam filters usually input email, while the passage of an unaltered message for delivery to the user's mailbox serves as its output function. These security tools can also throw the outgoing message away or redirect it for delivery elsewhere depending on their settings. Then again, there are email filters capable of modifying or editing messages during the processing stage of its operation. Spam filters are available as part of an email client (i.e., an extra service of sorts) or as a standalone, external software.

Nowadays, a lot of email clients already sport filters as a basic feature. These programs allow users to create customized, manual filters that automatically block unwanted or unsolicited email according to their custom preferences. Moreover, most email applications have an automatic spam filtering procedure too; in fact, you'd be more hard-pressed to find a client that doesn't have this widespread service. ISPs (Internet service providers) can also install these filters in their email transferring agents at the behest of their customers. Major corporations also use filters as a security measure that protects their interests, assets, data, and employees from common spam-related threats.

Anti-Spam Appliance

Anti-spam appliances are gadgets that incorporate on-board anti-spam software for email and instant messages (also known as "spim"). They are usually positioned at the forefront or gateway of the mail server for optimum performance. They are also run by an operating system that's specifically developed to combat and filter spam from your email inboxes. What's more, this service is most popular with institutions for corporate use (rather than individuals for personal use), so its main consumer base is composed of small businesses, universities, ISPs, multinationals, and so on.

The most trusted spam filter hardware available in the market today tend to feature attributes most suited for handling small-business-or-corporate-level spam traffic; i.e., the majority of spam filter products presently available are used to managing industrial-strength spam attacks numbering the millions instead of just hundreds of thousands. A typical spam firewall and blocking service is capable of filtering a staggering amount of email (over ten million unsolicited messages per day) without compromising the resources of your email servers. In fact, some appliances even have an extra virus-sieving filter at hand as well.

An excellent anti-spam device integrates both software and hardware benefits together in order to provide unmatchable dependability from the ground up.Moreover, maximum spam protection is best achieved by a manufacturer that has established a powerful operations center that monitors the latest spam trends and threats on a real-time basis. In order to keep up with the ever-evolving security threats posed by spammers and the worldwide web, an anti-spam appliance developer must continuously browse and examine the Internet for any necessary security and vulnerability adjustments. Naturally, these updates must be automatically retrieved by the device in order to keep your email protected at all times.

Then again, those average and basic spam-blocking capabilities are just small potatoes compared to the comprehensive package that high-end IT security devices possess. A truly worthwhile and value-addled anti-spam gadget also sports related features such as intrusion prevention, anti-phishing, anti-instant-messaging, anti-P2P, content filter, anti-spyware, and anti-virus benefits. These all-around gizmos are very popular to multinational and major-scale enterprises because they showcase a unified threat management (UTM) methodology that makes them infinitely more versatile than the standard anti-spam device.