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How much is spam costing your
company?
Spam Calculator >
"Spam accounts for 45% of all e-mails, or 15 billion messages
every day, and costs business world-wide a total of $20 billion
a year in lost productivity and technology expenses, according
to the Radicati Group, a market research firm in Palo Alto,
CA. The firm predicts the number of daily spams will rise to
more than 50 billion by 2007, and costs will reach almost $200
billion per year."
--Wall Street Journal, August 2003
Using a conservative approach, let's take a look at how much
spam is estimated to cost a company of 1000 people.
If we make the assumption that each person receives on average
20 spam emails per day and spends on average 15 seconds processing
each email, then that means the company receives about 7.3 million
spam emails over the course of a year and that its employees
spend about 30,500 hours processing these spam emails by either
deleting them or responding to them. That's 30,500 hours of
lost productivity.
To quantify this lost productivity, let's assume that the salary
per person averages out to be $60,000. This translates to a
productivity loss of over $877,400 in a year.
So, just looking at employee productivity, spam is costing
this company of 1000 employees over $877,400 a year. If you
further calculate in technology expenses associated with spam,
such as the amount of time wasted by the email servers in processing
all the spam emails and the amount of time IT support staff
spends battling spam, you'll find that the cost of spam only
goes up.
Bryant Design offers you
a choice in spam defense
All clients that host their email with Bryant Design are offered
Basic Anti-Spam at no additional charge. Basic Anti-Spam does
work in blocking spam, and includes features like Bayesian analysis
and keyword filtering that are common features to anti-spam
solutions. But in response to client requests to provide a more
comprehensive service to deal with spam, Bryant Design has now
added a premium solution.
Bryant Design Enhanced Spam Protection (ESP) provides a higher
level of spam-blocking for your organization. The algorithms
and methods used are the most comprehensive and most advanced
in the industry. What’s more, the methods and techniques
used by ESP are constantly updated (via hourly updates), to
keep up with changes that spammers and virus writers are constantly
making.
ESP provides a number of parameters that can be adjusted and
tuned for your specific environment. These parameters do not
have to be adjusted to obtain extremely effective spam blocking,
but are available for advanced users.
Some of the algorithms employed to block spam are listed below
with a short description.
| Technique |
Description |
| Blacklisting
of websites & domains |
Maintains an up to date list of
the largest and most aggressive known spammers. This list
is maintained by both ESP and other anti-spam groups. This
list is automatically updated on each account. |
| Keyword scanning of emails |
Our scanning methods include a scoring system such that
emails are scored based on a number of criteria. If the
score is above a threshold, then that email is flagged as
spam. |
| Checksum technology |
Monitors email traffic thr ough
the Internet and uses checksum technology to keep track
of the number of times a particular message has appeared
on the Internet. If a message has appeared very broadly,
it would be categorized as known spam. Checksums of known
spam messages are utilized by ESP to block spam messages.
|
| Message authenticity checking |
Several algorithms are utilized to verify the authenticity
of a message. Some of these are simple checks to verify
that the "from address" is authentic. Some are
more complex relating to SMTP protocol. |
| Blacklists
and Whitelists |
Domains, IPs, and email addresses
can be blocked or whitelisted (allowed through). These lists
may be maintained on a per user basis.
|
| Rate controls |
Rate controls are utilized to stop denial of service attacks
as well as dictionary based spam attacks. These are integrated
and automatic in ESP. |
| Bayesian Algorithms |
Bayesian filters are personalized
to each user and adapt automatically to changes in spam.
To determine the likelihood that an email is spam, these
filters use Bayesian analysis to compare the words or phrases
in the email in question to the frequency of the same words
or phrases in the intended recipient's previous emails (both
legitimate and spam). |
| Spam Fingerprint Checking |
Fingerprinting techniques examine the characteristics,
or fingerprint, of emails previously identified as spam
and use this information to identify the same or similar
email each time one is intercepted. These real time fingerprint
checks are continuously updated by ESP and provide a method
of identifying spam with nearly zero false positives. |
| Intention Analysis |
Intention Analysis is used to look at the objective or
goal of the email. If the objective of the email is to sell
something, try and have you click on a commercial link,
or get you to take a particular action that is indicative
spam, the email will be categorized as spam |
Here is a side-by-side comparison of the two anti-spam
services offered by Bryant Design:
| |
Basic
Anti-Spam |
Enhanced
Anti-Spam
Protection |
| Reverse Black List |
X |
X |
| Keyword Filtering |
X |
X |
| Virus Check |
X |
X |
| Bayesian Analysis |
X |
X |
| Denial of Service Protection |
N/A |
X |
| IP Block List |
N/A |
X |
| Rate Control |
N/A |
X |
| Second Level Virus Check |
N/A |
X |
| User Specified Rules |
N/A |
X |
| Spam Fingerprint Check |
N/A |
X |
| Intention Analysis |
N/A |
X |
| Rule-based Scoring |
N/A |
X |
| User Defined Settings |
N/A |
X |
| Learns New Spam Patterns Over Time |
N/A |
X |
| Attachment Blocking |
N/A |
X |
Enhanced Spam Protection(ESP)
Pricing
ESP is currently being offered at a
30 day, money-back guarantee. If you do not wish to continue
the service within the first 30 days, we will refund your first
month and setup fee1. Setup fee will also be credited back once
you have reached the maximum number of mail accounts for your
hosting package2:
| Feature |
Classic |
Business |
E-Commerce |
Corporate |
Enterprise |
Dedicated/
Co-Location |
| Maximum Email Accounts in Hosting
Package: |
30 |
50 |
75 |
150 |
250 |
unlimited |
| Setup Fee: |
$299.00 |
$399.00 |
$399.00 |
$399.00 |
$399.00 |
$499.00 |
| Monthly Fee, per email account3: |
$2.00 |
$2.00 |
$2.00 |
$2.00 |
$2.00 |
$2.00 |
| Setup Fee Credited when max accounts
reached: |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
After 300 accounts. |
1Client must notify Bryant Design
in writing within 30 days of submission of signed quote for
Enhanced Spam Protection service, setup fee and first month’s
service to be eligible for the refund. After 30 days, client
must provide written notice of cancellation 60 days in advance.
2Credit will be applied against subsequent billing
for ESP service, and will not be issued as a refund.
3ESP service is billed quarterly and in advance.
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