Threat Protection and Spam Filtering

If you’ve already invested in an e-mail system, whether it’s a few mailboxes or hundreds, there are some security risks to consider. The more widespread and known your email address becomes, the more it attracts a barrage of spam, viruses, phishing and adult content messages. Trying to filter it out manually can be risky, time consuming and a frustrating distraction from your business.

What is spam and is it bad?

Spam is just annoying unsolicited commercial e-mail. Many carry risks, peddling pills and dubious investment opportunities. In the extreme, buried in the deluge will be messages forged to appear from genuine trusted brands and authorities which carry dangerous links or attachments.

A virus infection can cost a significant amount of time and money. If an infected e-mail is triggered by human error it can quickly spread across the organisation, necessitating a significant clean-up operation. Worse still, many viruses silently install e-mail distribution software to further proliferate the deluge. Suddenly you are infecting customers, suppliers, friends and family, because viruses scan for email addresses on the infected computer and network. Ultimately, if left unchecked viruses can open back doors for unethical hackers to steal and leak sensitive company information.

A phishing e-mail is a forged message purporting to be from a legitimate source such as a financial institution or social network. Some of them are so obviously fake, but some are very sophisticated and can fool even the seasoned computer user. If the instructions within these messages are followed—usually some security alert—then it can have devastating effects on your personal and company identity and financial security.

All it takes is one drowsy colleague to click on the wrong thing on Monday morning before they’ve had their cup of coffee!

How can I protect against spam and viruses?

Introducing Defender for Microsoft 365. It provides advanced filtering of spam, viruses, phishing and adult content messages for your e-mail system, whatever its set-up. Your inbound e-mail is first routed through a quarantine system, allowing the scanning of each message and its attachments for viruses (even hidden ones). Then it assesses the message content for patterns of spam by performing a series of tests to score the message to pass a threshold.

Messages that stay below a threshold (adjustable) are instantly forwarded to Inbox and users receive their e-mail as normal. Suspected virus-infected messages are quarantined and others identified with spam content are deferred to Junk-Email for later review.

Why do I need extra email protection?

We know that most e-mail applications come with a basic level of anti-spam, and some experienced users may consider this to be adequate. However, the filtering takes place on the local computer and therefore it’s unable to prevent spam/virus messages from being seen on webmail and mobile devices. Instead we filter on the server side, so all you see is the e-mail you want to see, wherever and however you connect.