Commercial Integrator August 2022 - 14

THE SERVICE DESK
Spam Filtering: An Important
Part of a Nutritious Breakfast
Careful planning is the most important part of any eff ective anti-spam deployment. We off er key tips to
maximize your chances of success. By Link Porterfi eld
THE FIRST SPAM EMAIL was sent 44 years
ago, and the threat posed by this sinister
practice has grown to reach a scale that
few, if any, could have envisioned back in
the late 1970s. The spam problem goes far
beyond annoying solicitations for questionable
products and unwanted adverts from
presumably well-meaning, but misguided
and overzealous, marketing teams. These
days, it's a frequent vector for identity theſt ,
ransomware and other extortion attempts.
Even the most conservative fi gures for the
resulting fi nancial damages attributable to
spam are staggering! A well-implemented
spam-fi ltering solution can become an
indispensable part of your defense against
online crime.
Planning is the most important part of
any successful spam-fi ltering deployment.
Working with an expert to make sure you
completely understand your current mail
fl ow, as well as your desired outcomes, can
mean the diff erence between a seamless
integration that goes off without a hitch
and one that is an unmitigated disaster,
replete with lost email. If you know in advance
how your email domains both send
and receive mail, you'll be armed with key
details that need to be accounted for in any
spam-fi ltering project.
Ongoing Monitoring
and Maintenance
As with any technology, spam-fi ltering
tools are not " one size fi ts all, " and they're
not " set it and forget it, " either. Once you
have a spam-fi ltering tool in place, you will
need to monitor and maintain it. This is a
critical element of any successful solution,
whether you rely on in-house staff , a
trusted solution provider or a combination
that leverages both. Adopting a strategy
in which only the mailbox owner handles
maintenance might seem like a way to
spread out the eff ort, but taking that
tack forsakes the benefi ts of aggregate
14
The spam problem goes far beyond annoying solicitations for questionable products.
These days, it's a frequent vector for identity theſt , ransomware and more.
knowledge and cumulative experience
that specifi c individuals or teams can reap.
Planning for dedicated resources, which
can check the email quarantine to evaluate
and adjust fi ltering rules, will leave you in a
more advantageous position.
Having a plan in place to review your
fi ltering rules regularly can help you learn
which ones are ineff ective. Aſt er all, one
can easily create a rule that is overly broad
or excessively specifi c. Too many times, I
have seen an inquiry from a mailbox owner,
asking why they received some spam email,
only to fi nd out that they added the sender's
email address to their allow list, or they
placed an overly specifi c address on their
block list. Obviously, the former bypasses
regular fi ltering; by contrast, the latter oſt en
allows similar messages through because
they do not match the narrow fi lter criteria.
Learning what works and what doesn't work
takes time and, oſt en, what seems intuitive
might prove ineff ective. Given that cloud
computing is eff ectively a global resource,
quarantining - or even simply labeling -
email by country of origin is just one situation
Commercial Integrator AUGUST 2022
where a decision might produce unexpected
results and require adjustment.
Evaluations and Filters
Every inbound message that reaches the
spam fi lter has many evaluations performed
on it, and those are coupled with any
custom fi lters that your organization's email
administrator has defi ned. Among the most
important checks performed are anti-spoofing
tests. Although not something that can
be implemented entirely within your spam
fi lter, even if it includes benefi cial tools like
Domain Keys Identifi ed Mail (DKIM) signing
capability, confi guring your domain to be
Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting
& Conformance (DMARC) compliant
will make it possible for your spam-fi ltering
system, as well as your recipients' own, to
confi rm the authenticity of email claiming to
be sent from one of your domains. Although
DMARC compliance appears to be a simple
concept on the surface, a valid implementation
can prove challenging in the absence of
a knowledgeable partner.
Once you have a hosted spam-fi ltering
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Commercial Integrator August 2022

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