Many companies use the anti-spam software offered with their email solutions. They don’t see the point of adding an additional solution. Some don’t even use one! Yet this is a real concern for organisations as email is the main entry point for cyber-attacks.
In addition to raising employee awareness of the best practices for recognising fraudulent emails, it is important to strengthen the security of your professional email system. In many cases, the anti-spam software offered by your provider is not enough. We tell you why.
Built-in antispam is not efficient enough
Anti-spam software built into email systems filters out unwanted email using general, predefined filtering rules. These rules are difficult to administer and are not easily adaptable to the needs of users and to the sudden appearance of new threats. It is therefore an incomplete protection of the email system, blocking emails from spam lists, which have dubious objects or attachments.
The proof: in 2016, AV Comparatives sent 127,800 spam messages to accounts held with email service providers. The detection rates were very low: 89.87% of the spam arrived at one of the providers. This indicates that it is important to go beyond the basic versions—apparently free, at least at no additional cost – and to get a more powerful complementary solution.
The more powerful are expensive
Of course, email providers offer enhanced, paid versions of their anti-spam software (such as Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection / Microsoft 365 Defender). These offer more advanced features. For example, they can be configured by the administrators (display, modification, configuration). It is also possible to create custom rules for each user, which will always take precedence over the global rules.
These versions also offer automated processes using artificial intelligence. They go further and identify commercial campaigns that escape first-level filtering. Dashboards are also available to analyse the evolution of mail traffic and the number of spam, junk mail, etc.
However, these solutions are expensive and are invoiced based on the number of users. You should expect to pay several tens of Euros per month and per user, on average. Do the calculation according to your number of employees: this is a significant amount for companies, which sometimes prefer not to use them. In this way, they leave the field more open to cybercriminals.
Antispam: What support does your email provider offer?
Popular business messaging providers are sometimes victims of their own success. The downside is that their support is not easily reachable or available. In the event of an incident, it is important to have access to efficient and responsive support. Moreover, it is often necessary to go through integrators to deploy these solutions, limiting direct relations with the vendor.
By working with a human-sized anti-spam solution editor like Alinto, you put all the chances on your side to benefit from a reactive partner, accessible and aware of your problems. This is a significant advantage when you know the consequences of an email unavailability or a cyber-attack. Make sure you get the right information before making your choice, as not all service providers offer the same level of support.
Even if the large professional email providers offer anti-spam as standard, it is essential to strengthen the security of your employees’ email boxes. There is a wide range of complementary solutions available to you. To make the right choice, define a list of criteria that you consider essential: support, functionality, ergonomics, proximity, price basis, etc. Don’t forget: it’s the software that adapts to your challenges and not the other way around!
