Astaro CEO warns against complacency with your mail security

Most of us have seen a reduction in the spam crowding our inboxes lately, thanks to recent the takedown of McColo Corp., a San Jose, CA based Web hosting service that supposedly hosted some of the biggest cyber criminal organizations in business. According to Commtouch Software, throughout the year spam rates averaged around 4 million recurrent spam patterns per day. The week of November 12, immediately after McColo was shut down, there was an average of 2.5 million spam patterns identified-a 38% drop. However, we can't become complacent in our mail security.  The respite is only temporary, and spam levels are already starting to creep back upward.

Cyber criminals will morph and adapt, and, before we know it, the deluge of unsolicited emails will return. It is therefore vital for network administrators to stay on top of mail security, even during this slow period. In order to lighten their load a bit, administrators should choose a mail security appliance with a comprehensive User Portal that allows all users to view and maintain their own quarantine lists and white lists. With this type of mail security solution, administrators are spared the hassle of searching for and retrieving quarantined emails for all network users—a time-consuming task.

Additionally, it is important that your mail security appliance utilize reputation-based mail filtering to enhance spam detection and minimize the misclassification of legitimate email as spam. Older solutions using only rule-based policies simply do not make the grade anymore as they can’t keep up with the ever-changing spam tactics.

All mail security solutions should also have strong protection against viruses, malware and phishing. This should go without saying in our current network security climate, but you can’t be too careful. So as your office slows down a bit for the holidays this year, be sure to take a little time for yourself, your friends and your family; but be sure not to let your guard down when it comes to your network’s security.

To learn more about the Astaro Mail Gateway or to download for free, visit http://www.astaro.com/.

By Jan Hichert, Astaro CEO