Spam is undoubtedly one of the most irritating problems facing small businesses today. Levels of spam have reached unprecedented highs and unless managed properly it can waste an enormous amount of time and cause huge irritation as staff trawl through which emails are genuine and which are junk. The situation has become so drastic that it has sparked a big re-think in the way small businesses filter their emails. Until recently the most common method has been to run spam filtering software on the company email servers. However as spam levels have increased and spammers have continued to find new ways to get around the filters, this has posed several concerns - What happens if the filtering software were to fall over? What would happen if the  software were to fail and chew up important emails never to be seen again? Are the email servers able to cope with the strain put on them by scanning thousand upon thousands of emails each day? What happens to an email if the email server is down for maintenance?

Well the solution is email scanning SAAS (software as a service). Instead of heading straight for your email server, all emails are firstly forwarded through a hosted email scanning service and filters all email for spam and viruses. Then only the clean, genuine email is forwarded on to the company's email servers. The spam detection rate is superb rather than mediocre (balancing the filtering levels locally is a fine art) and the email servers no longer have to run heavy, injury-prone scanning software. The net result is no more spam, zero risk of viruses being transmitted via email and a happier, more stable email server!

So it all sounds great, but let's have a look at some figures...

Qdos set up five small business clients on the new system and monitored the figures. For a total of 60 users over a four week period, the number of incoming email totalled 514,022 (over half a million!!) Of this total, 29,676 (6%) were genuine and therefore a staggering 484,346 (94%) were spam. Needless to say those customers that have taken up the new service have been delighted with the results. Staff can use their time effectively and the networks are more secure and stable. The new filtering system also provides end users with daily spam reports by email that allows them to release anything that just might be genuine via a single click. It also stores emails for 30 days just in case the email server is unavailable to receive email.

Overall it is a vast step forward in spam management. If you would like further information on this please don't hesitate to call our networks department. A free 30 day trial is also available.