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Spamalytics: New Research on Fighting Spam
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Researchers at the University of California have been conducting a multi-year study investigating spam and other unsolicited email communications. Their study, dubbed “Spamalytics” has shed light on possibly the most powerful way to fight spam.
The Study
According to an article published in The New York Times, the researchers allowed every piece of spam mail to enter their inboxes and then actually purchased products from 120 strategically selected messages. Their findings showed that it took 12.5 million spam messages to sell a $100 unit of pharmaceuticals. More importantly, they found that the most effective place to combat spam as an industry was by blocking cooperation with spammers and banks. Specifically, if the relationship between bank card processors and spam advertisers can be severed, the research suggests that spam would no longer be a profitable venture and therefore go the way of the dinosaurs.
What Can You Do To Protect Your Company?
Until legislation is introduced to ban these bankcard processors from doing business with spammers, or until there is a voluntary movement to abandon the practice, companies need to protect their email servers from spam infiltration. There are many options out there now to help guard against incoming spam messages including: blacklisting, greylisting, sender reputation and Sender Policy Framework. Having a strict and well-enforced email policy is another way to help protect company assets. Above all, investing in an effective spam filter will be well worth it considering the level of protection provided for a company.
Spamalytics may be a great step forward in thwarting the nefarious efforts of cyber criminals, but until there is cooperation from bankcard processors, it’s really in the hands of companies themselves to protect their inboxes from incoming spam messages with anti-spam software and filters.
How You To Protect Your Company From Unprofessional Emails
When you think of the number of emails you send and receive on a daily basis, it’s hard to imagine that any one of them can be particularly damaging to your company. In reality anything from a faux pas, typographical error, grammatical mishap or a spam attack can affect your company’s customers and your bottom line.
The Error You Didn’t Catch
The less serious email mishaps that happen all too frequently are communication miscues, typos, and grammatical errors. While not ideal as it can make the sender and business seem careless and unprofessional, companies can usually address this problem with spelling checkers and stipulations in the company email policy. Make sure it’s required that employees proofread and spell-check all emails before they hit send. Tell them to avoid sending harried emails from mobile devices unless they can take the time to properly word the email. Set a company-wide email signature so that all emails consistently include the company’s branding and any necessary legal disclaimers. Simple steps can make a world of difference where your professional image and reputation is concerned.
The Error You Need To Catch
If your email security has been compromised, your contacts and more importantly your reputations could be used to pawn scams. In addition to other security measures, a good way to protect against infiltration is to use anti-spam and anti-phishing software that can block spam attacks and thwart phishing attacks. If your spam filter makes use of greylisting, it will not only block spam and phishing attacks but viruses sent from infected zombie machines. If someone were to send a malicious email to your contacts impersonating your company, it’s likely that your customers – who trust your company – could fall victim to a phishing scam. The damage to your company’s image and reputation could be significant.
The Worst Error Of All
It is important to prevent employees spouting off and sending a less than pleasant email to a fellow co-worker or a customer. This type of malicious email can hurt your company’s reputation by casting the appearance that your workplace is out of control. An overly emotional or angry email smacks of disrespect to the recipient. In addition to talking to your employees about holding off on hitting that send button with a hot head, installing an email content filter can make sure that emails containing any inappropriate language are blocked before they are delivered and can do any damage.
Diligence is a requirement in any workplace with electronic communication. Protecting your company is paramount when considering one click of the send button could have lasting and damaging consequences.
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month: How Will You Protect Your Data?
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month and is a great time for businesses to incorporate educational opportunities for employees to keep them safe online at work.
At Red Earth Software we fully understand how critical it is to protect your business with effective safeguards like anti-spam software that effectively blocks junk mail and spam messages.
Keep in mind that cyber security in the workplace is just as much about protecting your business as it is about protecting your customers. Data breaches not only expose information about your company, but they can also expose your customers’ confidential information. Phishing attacks have been around for some time now but with the increasing sophistication and rise of individualized spear phishing attacks, they are becoming harder to spot.
“Successful phishing attacks are launched through emails that all have one thing in common: they seem like they have originated from a legitimate or well-known source, like a bank,” says Deborah Galea, COO and co-founder of Red Earth Software. “The recipient then unwittingly provides passwords and other sensitive information or clicks on a link that infects their computer with malware. For SMBs, a good way to fight these attacks is to install anti-spam software and anti-virus software and make sure it’s kept up to date. Email filtering software can help as well. In addition, it’s wise to have a sound email policy in place and make sure your employees are educated about the dangers of phishing. Your email policy should spell out the warning signs of a phishing attack and provide steps to take when an email is received requesting passwords or sensitive data. Having a set policy can make a significant difference in whether or not your company ends up a phishing victim.”
Stay tuned for more tips on how to protect your sensitive email data.
Three Reasons All Companies Need A Uniform Email Signature
When communicating through email, your words and the look of your email convey a strong message. Customers, vendors and associates will undoubtedly judge your company by not only the content, but also the look of your email and your email signature. What are you conveying about your company with your email signature?
Here we offer three reasons all companies should broadcast a uniform email signature.
1) Convey A Professional Image
While it may seem cute to express your personality on your work emails with animations and colorful fonts, it’s simply not appropriate if you’re company is trying to project a professional image. It makes more sense for a company to have a simple, clean signature including the company logo. Not only does this communicate a higher level of legitimacy and professionalism to anyone who receives it, but it also provides instant brand recognition for your company.
2) Utilize Marketing Opportunities
Furthermore, every company has scheduled events, news to brag about and even new products to share with your customer base, why not use your outgoing emails to get the word out? By simply adding a note to your company’s established email signature, you can capitalize on the emails you and your employees send out every day. This creative way to increase your marketing reach costs nearly nothing, and is very easy to do with a centrally managed email signature solution.
3) Minimize legal, Confidentiality and Privacy Risks
Confidentiality, legal, and privacy email disclaimers are a common expectation in today’s digital based workplace. A uniform email signature provides companies the chance to add all necessary disclaimer information to all outgoing emails. Disclaimers protect your company, employees, customers and best interests.
Why risk undermining your professional image and legitimacy by not instituting a company-wide email signature? By simply adding a uniform email signature, any business owner can protect their business image as well as increase their marketing reach.
Security on Your Mobile Device
Mobile devices are one of the modern workplace’s greatest assets. The level of flexibility they offer makes computing on the go, from remote locations, and away from the office a great way to increase productivity. Despite all their benefits, mobile devices can be a huge point of vulnerability for security breaches.
What Makes A Mobile Device Vulnerable?
Mostly the lack of security on any mobile device is what makes it susceptible to breaches. Most users don’t run any sort of anti-spam software on their device making it a sitting duck for malware and other spam attacks. As we discussed previously, most users also don’t protect their devices with passwords. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that your smartphone or tablet is in all actuality a computer that needs the same level of protection as any other PC you’d use for business emails.
How Can You Protect Your Email and Data?
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again here: passwords, passwords, passwords. It is essential to protect your mobile device with a complex password of at least nine characters including letters, numbers and other characters. Nearly all computing devices have a feature for passwords and to not use that feature is an invitation for breaches. If your mobile device is connected to your company’s email system, chances are anti-spam software and email-anti-virus scanning is performed at the server level so this should protect your email on your mobile device too.
These few steps may seem simple, but they can make a huge difference in preventing a devastating security breach.