You Really Should Get an Email Spam Filter

Many business owners look at email spam like the junk mail we get in our mailbox. They just think it’s a fact of life that they have to deal with. But spam, which includes dangerous phishing emails, can be more than just an annoyance. It can drag down productivity, cause delays in responses to critical messages, and put your network in danger of a breach. Email is one of the most important cloud services at any company. It also takes up more work time than most other software, with the average worker spending 28% of their workday handling email. Because email has such a big impact on your team and their daily tasks, keeping spam at bay using email filtering can also have a big impact on efficiency, security, and more.

What Does Email Spam Filtering Do?

Email spam filtering is a system that will identify advertising emails, phishing emails, and legitimate emails and sort them accordingly. It will typically send unwanted mail like phishing or spam to a “spam” or “quarantine” folder, so it is not mixed in with your other email. Spam filtering will typically need to be trained when you first begin using it to help it recognize mail you want from mail you don’t want. For example, you may want those advertising emails from Staples coming in so you can use the coupons, but not want advertisements from other senders. You can train a spam filter by designating a particular sender and message as “spam” and the filter will remember that for the next time they send you anything and filter the message accordingly. You can also ensure that important messages aren’t accidentally sent to a spam folder by designating “approved senders” as those you want to receive in your inbox.

Spam Filtering Benefits

Using an email spam filter for your company email accounts is important for a number of reasons.

Improves Productivity

Spam makes up approximately 54% of all email traffic, it also causes people to have to sift through unwanted messages to get to legitimate ones. That adds to the time they have to spend reading and responding to email. Email filtering drastically reduces the amount of spam in users’ inboxes, meaning less time spent sorting through email to get to important messages and a more efficient and productive day.

Reduces Risk of Malware & Data Breaches

Email is the number one delivery method for phishing attacks that contain malware or are designed to steal user login credentials. 92% of malware is delivered through email. Even with employee phishing awareness training, people can still get fooled by sophisticated phishing emails that use ploys like email address spoofing and the logos of well-known companies. Reduce the number of phishing emails that make it to user inboxes, and you reduce your risk of suffering a ransomware infection or credential breach of a cloud account.

Reduces Interruptions Throughout the Day

It can take as much as 23 minutes to get back to the same place in a task after an interruption of just a few seconds. One of the biggest productivity sinkholes in an office are those little interruptions that happen throughout the day to take us off task. One of these interruptions is when an email comes in. We see the banner or icon indication that there’s a new message and feel compelled to check it to see if it’s important. And more often than not, it’s an unimportant spam message, if you’re not using email filtering. You can cut down on those constant interruptions when email comes in by using email spam filtering to keep out spam messages altogether.

Where Do I Find Email Spam Filtering?

Many businesses already have a spam filtering option in their cloud email service and don’t even realize it. If you use Microsoft 365 or G Suite, you can turn on email spam filtering to help keep user inboxes protected from phishing and unproductive spam. In Microsoft 365: There is an Outlook Junk Filter that is on by default, however the protection level is set to “no automatic filtering.”  To activate automatic spam filtering, go to Home > Junk > Junk Email Options. In G Suite: G Suite administrators can access spam filter settings in Gmail. The filter is turned on by default, but admins can tweak these settings in the administrative area to do things like add approved senders lists and more. On Your Mail Server: If you host your own email on a server, then in the server administration area there will be options to add spam filtering to all user email and you’ll often have a choice of different spam filter applications to use.

Get Help from Copperband Technologies for Spam Filter Setup

We can help you improve security and productivity by setting up email spam filtering for your company email addresses to reduce spam and phishing in user inboxes. Contact us today to schedule an email consultation! Call 931.263.8000