Companies Find Solutions for Spam
Spam, or junk e-mail, has become a big problem for apparel companies and other enterprises. It’s estimated that by 2007, more than 70 percent of all incoming email for businesses will be spambased, according to the Radicati Group of Palo Alto, Calif. However, advancements in software technology by companies such as Tumbleweed Communications Corp., Cloudmark, SurfControl, Clearswift Ltd. and Postini Inc. are helping to fight the problem.
Sportswear company Fila was getting more than 20,000 spam messages a day at its offices in New York and Maryland. Some employees were getting more than 200 junk e-mail messages per day. Deleting the mail line by line was cutting into productivity, so Fila officials decided enough was enough.
The company recently purchased a package by market leader Tumbleweed Communications Corp. of Redwood City, Calif., and the software has helped Fila block about 90 percent of incoming spam. Tumbleweed’s Email Firewall system is based on heuristic defenses, which set up blocking functions for spam messages as they are published, similar to how anti-virus software works. The firewall also scans inbound messages for viruses and has defenses against hackers, Web hijackers and bugs. The system’s spam analysis engine has a 90 percent or higher capture rate with a one-tenth of 1 percent falsepositive rate before tuning.
Fila project leader Brian Quill looked at products from four companies before choosing Tumbleweed’s. Quill said Fila chose Tumbleweed’s product because of its automatic update service and turnkey approach.
Tumbleweed’s product starts at about $14,500, but the software company said return on investment can come within 17 days.
—R.M.
