December 2007

BUSINESSES GO CHRISTMAS CRACKERS OVER UNWANTED MAIL

Goodwill to all during the festive season can be thin on the ground in the workplace at the best of times but even the most generous of bosses can turn into Scrooge if they're loosing money unnecessarily. With spam emails being one of the biggest drains on business' resources, it's no wonder management is seeing red - without Rudolph in sight. But before you let the boss hit the mulled wine in earnest, help is at hand in the shape of Aberdeen-based, Acumen IT Consultancy Limited, part of the Acumen Group.

Companies throughout the north-east are getting bogged down with spam emails resulting in significant lost working hours. Recent surveys show more than half of all emails received by the region's business sector are unwanted and time spent ploughing through these can be costly.

Emma Leiper IT support co-ordinator of AcumenIT said: "The impact spam emails can have on a business can not be underestimated. Not only do businesses waste a considerable amount time filtering through their emails to prevent their systems getting clogged up but companies are also at increased risk of viruses, spyware and phising.

"This cuts down on the time employees can spend doing their work and also leaves bosses facing a hefty IT call-out fee to fix problems. Not to mention the added worry of having sensitive information compromised."

There are a number of steps businesses can take to reduce the problem and rekindle the festive cheer. As a first step companies should advise staff to take the following precautions:

• Do not open any emails from unknown sources and delete them immediately,
• Do not open web links from unreliable sources
• Do not give out personal details such as usernames, passwords or bank details

But, this alone is by no means foolproof and companies who want to protect themselves should invest in a specialist spam filtering service.

"Many smaller companies cannot justify purchasing a high specification solution outright but still want and need the benefits it brings," added Emma Leiper. "That's why we recently launched a managed spam filtering service that gives users the same results for a fixed annual fee. Businesses who have signed up are already reporting a dramatic drop in the amount of unwanted mail that is arriving daily on their systems," she said

The system works by redirecting the client's e-mails to the AcumenIT managed spam filter service. From here the email is checked for any anomalies before being forwarded to the client. Additional benefits of the service are it reduces the load from the client server.

Suzanne Buist, Project Coordinator of Scotvalve Services Limited, based in Dyce, said: "We'd tried using another filtering service but it just wasn't coping with the volume of junk mail that was coming through everyday. We spoke to Acumen IT about other solutions that were available and since switching services we've seen a vast reduction in the amount of spam coming into the company. As a result, everybody has significantly more time to focus on their work rather than sorting through their inbox."

There's no denying that spam mail is here to stay and with more and more companies vying to attract our attention through blanket emailing campaigns our virtual letterboxes have now more than ever needed a helping hand.

Emma Leiper, IT support co-ordinator of Acumen IT can be contacted at emma.leiper@acumen.info