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Email is the quintessential business communication tool, so when it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, business suffers. Anti spam software is designed to protect your inbox from unwanted messages, but unless your system is properly trained even the best software misses the mark and flags legitimate messages as spam. These messages are referred to as “false positives.”

While consumer and ISP anti spam products focus on blocking messages and even consider some false positives acceptable, businesses require anti spam solutions that treat their messages as very valuable. Failing to receive critical messages in a timely fashion can do irreparable damage to customer and partner relationships and cause important orders to be missed, so eliminating false positives while maintaining high anti spam accuracy is paramount to any enterprise anti spam solution.

What causes false positives?

Different anti spam solutions utilize different methods of detecting and blocking spam. Anti spam software typically uses content filtering or Bayesian Logic, an advanced content filtering method, to score each email, looking for certain tell-tale signs of spammer habits such as frequently used terms like “Viagra” or “click here.” Other anti spam solutions reference blacklists and whitelists to determine whether the sender has shown spammer tendencies in the past. A false positive can occur when a legitimate sender raises enough red flags, either by using too many “spam terms” or sending from an IP address that has been used by spammers in the past.

Minimizing False Positives

Although it takes a person only a moment to process a message and identify it as spam, it is difficult to automate that human process because no single message characteristic consistently identifies spam. In fact, there are hundreds of different message characteristics that may indicate an email is spam, and an effective anti spam solution must be capable of employing multiple spam detection techniques to effectively cover all bases.

A comprehensive anti spam approach involves examining both message content and sender history in tandem. By using a reputation system to evaluate senders based on their past behavior, a more accurate picture of their intentions and legitimacy can be discerned, and a solution’s false positive rate can be further lowered. Has the sender engaged in spamming, virus distribution or phishing attacks in the past? If not, the likelihood of their message getting past the email gateway just went up, and the chances of a false positive declined accordingly. If they have, an effective reputation system knows and flags the message.

Self-Optimization

In order to be most effective, anti spam solutions must learn based on a recipient’s preferences. While most of us prefer not to receive emails containing the term Viagra, some medical organizations might need to receive these emails in order to process patient data. In order to best learn your organizational preferences, anti spam solutions should put filtered emails into a quarantine that allows users to review and make decisions as to whether a particular message is spam. Making this quarantine available to the end-user lowers the administration costs and increases the accuracy of the anti spam system.

Each time a user makes a decision about whether a particular email is or is not spam, the system becomes more personalized and intelligent about filtering email for that individual in the future. Over time, users find that they rarely need to review their quarantines anymore because the system has learned how to identify messages that are important to that user.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

In conclusion, it is imperative that false positives be kept to an absolute minimum for business users. Although consumers may have more patience with incorrectly blocked email, businesses cannot afford these types of problems. An effective, accurate anti spam solution aggregates multiple spam detection technologies, combining the benefits of each individual technique to stop spam while minimizing false positives. It also puts suspected spam into a quarantine that is available to end-users, and learns how to better identify spam in the future.

Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry’s largest provider of enterprise email security. The company’s flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting http://www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection/ today.

Tags: anti spam, anti spam solution, enterprise anti spamanti spam, anti spam solution, enterprise anti spam

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CGI Proxy sites work by very quickly and effectively relaying web page request for users to web sites and back. The CGI Proxy script relays your information without ever revealing exactly who you are. So you are anonymous to the web site you are visiting. This is done in a near seamless manor with the user only seeing a small advertising bar on top of the page. This information is going in both directions with the web site server talking to the server hosting the CGI proxy site. The website server does not know your location (IP address), browser type, language settings, cannot set cookies on your computer and Javascripts may be restricted.

What most users do not realize is that the cgi proxy server keeps a log of all the activity including web pages visited, user names, passwords, addresses, credit card numbers or anything else a person enters in in the web pages surfed through a cgi proxy. This treasure of data is exactly what people want to hide on the Internet but by using a CGI Proxy site you have just delivered the information to the CGI Proxy site owwner.

In 99% of cases the web site being visited should be more reliable and secure than a web based cgi proxy service. For example visiting Yahoo mail from a new fast running CGI Proxy site, Yahoo is less likely to criminally use provided information collected from its websites combined with the knowledge of your location and browser type than a small website operator hosting a free CGI Proxy script. While logging into your yahoo account and not revealing your location (IP) to yahoo may sound positive, the price you pay is sharing all of your information including passwords with the CGI proxy site owner.

Credit card information, addresses, contacts or any other information entered on a web form while surfing pages through a CGI Proxy site are also available in the server logs. Don’t take the unneeded risk with your personal information, DO NOT USE WEBBASED CGI PROXY SITES FOR ANONYMITY.

CGI Proxy sites do have evolved into a leading way to bypass network website filters that block specific sites. just be sure that you know the risk involved in checking your hotmail from work or looking at your myspace profile at school. This is a leading source of hijacked profiles for these sites.

Michael Paul is a web site developer who shares his insight into the working s of the web. Learn more about start using cgi proxy at http://www.cgiproxy.info

Tags: Anon surfing, CGIproxy, internet securityAnon surfing, CGIproxy, internet security

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The days of riding horseback through the wilderness to deliver a message are over. But make no mistake; we’re not out of the woods yet. The digital world exposes us all to a virtual wilderness. Email offers simplicity to both the messenger and the malevolent.

Email has grown in vitality, now becoming the most important communication tool in the corporate world. The perpetuation of emerging threats has transformed email from an asset to a liability. Gone are the days when organizations could manually cope with the occasional email-borne nuisance. Email security has become a necessity and organizations must know the best way to ensure the integrity of their email network.

Perhaps an even greater threat to your organization’s effectiveness is an over-investment in an under-effective email security solution. Organizations must seek a comprehensive, future-proof solution on a platform that integrates flawlessly with their current infrastructure.

The email security market is not bound by in-house software or hardware solutions. Organizations can push the war against spam, viruses, and other email borne threats outside of their network using a managed service.

What is a managed service?

Unlike software and appliance solutions, a managed email security solution sits entirely outside of your network. With a quick change of your organization’s Mail Exchange (MX) records, mail is routed through the managed service, effectively filtering your email and delivering only genuine messages to your network. Such an infrastructure offers a number of benefits over traditional appliance and software security measures.

Benefits

• Instant Deployment
• Zero Maintenance
• Failover / Redundancy
• Disaster Recovery
• Scalability
• Bandwidth Savings
• Complete Threat Protection
• Future-Proof
• Platform Independent
• Low TCO / Quick ROI

Instant Deployment

Since a managed service introduces no hardware or software into your infrastructures, deployments typically consist of only a simple MX record change. Moreover, managed solutions come pre-configured to maximize effectiveness with minimal user intervention.

Zero Maintenance

Updates to hardware and software are a necessary evil that demands time and money. This is especially true with security technology in order to stay ahead of new threats. But a managed service introduces absolutely no hardware or software into your infrastructure. All updates are performed by the managed service transparently to the end-user.

Failover / Redundancy

Implementing a redundant infrastructure is rarely cost-effective, especially in small to medium businesses. Yet, downtime is never acceptable. Deploying a managed solution is your ticket to enterprise-class reliability, without expending financial resources to integrate a redundant network infrastructure.

Disaster Recovery

Internal network and hardware glitches that compromise the availability of your email are inevitable. During downtime, not only is productivity lost, but also data which can cost your organization countless dollars. With a managed service, your email is queued during downtime. After connectivity is re-established, your email is promptly delivered to you. Organizations which deploy managed email security are able to focus solely on regaining connectivity, without worrying about lost messages during downtime.

Scalability

A managed service allows organizations the flexibility to grow without investing in additional information technology. Organizations with multiple geographic locations must purchase, implement, and maintain a software or hardware solution in each location that has a mail server. However, geographically dispersed organizations can be wholly controlled through a managed service, without any additional investments, installation, or maintenance.

Bandwidth Savings

Quality hardware and software solutions can effectively halt the flow of junk messages into end-users’ inboxes. However, these junk messages still reach the perimeter of your network. Bandwidth is required to analyze all messages, and messages that are quarantined must be downloaded and stored. With a managed solution, only genuine messages reach your network. Spam, viruses, fraud, and malicious email messages are stopped before they approach your organization’s perimeter.

Complete Threat Protection

There’s much more to email security than spam and virus protection. Directory harvesting, mail bombs, phishing, dictionary attacks, and many other threats assault vulnerable organizations each day, causing countless dollars in damage and lost productivity. Most appliances and software solutions are only a piece of the email security puzzle.

More importantly, with a managed service you have professionals maintaining your email’s security. Spam, viruses, and other email nuisances are growing more sophisticated, and require more sophisticated technology and know-how to combat them. A managed service supplies organizations with access to comprehensive technology and wisdom.

Future-Proof

Anti-spam technology, like no other, has an uncanny ability to lose effectiveness after a year or two. This is because spam is constantly changing, while your software and hardware is staying the same.

Spam is also growing in volume. A few years ago, you may have been receiving an average of ten spam messages a day. A spam solution with a 90% capture rate would catch all but one. Today, however, many users are receiving tens, even hundreds of junk messages a day. More intelligent software is needed to stop these additional messages, without misclassifying genuine ones.

A managed solution’s core competency is to stay ahead of email threats. Thus, organizations are always plugged in to a cutting edge solution.

Platform Independent

Regardless of your organization’s preferred OS and Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), a managed service can integrate easily into your infrastructure. Even organizations that utilize several operating systems and MTAs can quickly fit under the umbrella of a managed solution.

Low TCO / Quick ROI

Software and hardware solutions can rope you in with a large, non-refundable, upfront investment, and annual recurring fees. On the other hand, a managed solution is typically subscription-based, which can be cancelled at any time for a pro-rated refund. With a lower upfront outlay and minimal maintenance, organizations can realize a return on their investment in much less time with respect to traditional email security platforms.

Take Control of Your Email Network

Managed email security takes the burden off your budget and overworked IT staff and places it on the spammers. A managed service makes email what it was meant to be - an effective, hassle-free, business communication tool.

Spam Spy, LLC is an innovative provider in managed email security services.
For more information on managed email security, visit http://www.spamspy.com
(c) 2006 Spam Spy, LLC. All rights reserved.

Tags: anti spam, email, managed email security, phishing, Security, spam, spam blocker, virusesanti spam, email, managed email security, phishing, Security, spam, spam blocker, viruses

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