Domain registration, Internet connectivity and web site hosting specialists Internet Online say companies should not have to pay for being ‘spammed’. The company houses an e-mail firewall that effectively blocks viruses and spam.
Using the latest software technology and most up-to-date virus definition files, Cape-based Internet Online is able to stop almost all viruses and reduce spam by at least 85%. Why the need for preventative security when it comes to spam?
Besides the known fact that online junk mail is a nuisance for users, it also represents a significant and expensive headache for IT enabled organisations.
Amir Sachs, director at Blue Sky Internet Online, says, “Spam fills up users mailboxes and hijacks network bandwidth. It takes up disk space on the mail server and, depending on your e-mail system, on a client’s machine as well. Perhaps worst of all, it takes up employees time – whether every individual junk mail is opened or not.”
According to Sachs, it is difficult to quantify the time wasted on junk e-mail. However, if one considers an average example - one user obtains four such e-mails a day and follows just one of these mails up, they end up spending up to 20 minutes of their time daily. This equates to over 80 hours a year per employee.
“Doesn’t sound like much – but if you have ten people on e-mail and you pay the minimum wage of R20 per hour, you lose R16, 000 per annum. As such, the more users you have on your network, the more it is going to cost your organisation,” he says.
Aside from chewing up bandwidth and time, there is also the danger of catching a virus through spam. Sachs says most companies detect viruses at the user level – meaning that it is up to the user to maintain an up-to-date database of viruses. Failure to do so, he says, may result in a virus attachment on the local network.
“Implementing virus detection at the server level shifts the workload to a central location, and reduces the administrative overhead in maintaining multiple copies of anit-virus software, and the need to update multiple computers.”
Internet Online houses a comprehensive fully automated anti-virus system that checks and manages up to 25 000 e-mails everyday.
“This system provides us with one of the most comprehensive and efficient anti-virus alert services available to clients. The software automatically brings up a full anti-virus system report that confirms the status of any potential threat. The software automatically cleans the infected e-mails, then alerts the intended recipient that the virus has been neutralised. The report includes other relevant details including the nature of the virus as well as details of the sender.”
Julian Sher, technical director at Internet Online, says, “Our mail server utilises the latest anti-virus scanning software by McAfee and the virus definitions are continuously being updated. Our mail server handles about 25,000 emails daily and has stopped about 10,000 virus from spreading to our users in the past week.”
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