Spam Protection & Why You Need It
We all know how frustrating it is to open your inbox and be greeted with overflowing junk emails. Your workday just started, and already it’s stressful and overwhelming. Unfortunately, these spammy emails are so much more than just productivity killers. They can also be malicious attempts to steal your sensitive business information or corrupt your computer.
What is Spam?
Spam refers to any unwanted bulk communication. It is sent via email, text messages, social media, or phone calls. When you receive spam, in many cases, your email address or other information was purchased by a person or company as part of a list. It could also have been stolen by a cybercriminal who had access to an organization’s email address lists. The person sending the spam sends the same email to many people simultaneously. The attack is successful when the email works on any one person.
How Does Spam Protection Work?
Spam protection software uses several filters to determine which emails are safe and keep unwanted emails from entering your inbox. Some filters will analyze the email source, its content, and the engagement it generates. Others filter emails out by checking just the headers of the message. You can also flag an email as spam, and the program will make a rule based on its contents and apply it to any new emails. Filters can be set to ignore all emails from specific addresses and recognize suspicious word patterns, repeated words, and flagged phrases.
How Can Spam Filters Help?
Spam filters provide an extra layer of security for your network. Email is the most popular way for cybercriminals to infect your computer with malware and gain access to your data. For example, an attacker may send a phishing email with an attachment or link that looks innocent. However, hidden in the code is a virus or malicious website that, once clicked, triggers an attack on the organization’s network. With the right kind of spam filter, you can keep dangerous emails out of your employees’ inboxes.
How Can GTS Help?
While many email suites, including Office 365, have an anti-virus solution built into the system, most are designed with minimal filter requirements. These traditional spam and malware filters are great at filtering away junk mail and suspicious attachments. But sometimes, they filter out legitimate mail, causing you to miss critical communications. That’s where GTS PhishGuard comes in.
Our GTS PhishGuard service is not a spam filter but rather an ultra-focused program that targets phishing scams, going so far as to pull emails out of your team’s inboxes if a message is identified as a threat. It integrates directly with Office 365, so you can arm your inbox against phishing scams without ever leaving Outlook. The program scans text, links, and sending and forwarding addresses in your emails to identify anything that seems “phishy.” Then it calls them directly to your attention with built-in warning ribbons. Plus, when GTS PhishGuard has identified a fake email address or you’ve received a message that doesn’t look right to you, you can flag it as suspicious and send it to our experts at GTS for review with a single button click. If we think it’s a threat, it’ll be logged and documented into GTS PhishGuard, and automatically removed from your inbox and the inbox of every other member of your team. In addition, GTS PhishGuard gives you access to a worldwide database of community-added threats. When an email pops up in your inbox, our service automatically runs it past a global database of documented threats. If a match is found, it will identify the message as a phishing scam and pull it from your inbox before they ever threaten your team or your business.
Our experts at GTS know how to defend against the latest threats like spear-phishing, ransomware, impersonation, and other targeted attacks. To learn more about what additional email security could do for your organization, give us a call today at (904) 606-6011 or email info@helpgts.com.
