Canonical Hour

Microsoft Exchange Server - Filtering Spam Effectively

By: Jane Y. Whigmore

Due to the increasing amount of spam, effective filters are needed to monitor and block junk messages, it is the only way to ensure proper functioning of MS Exchange

In todays business world, malware e-mail has emerged as the biggest evil that is cutting productivity and adding troubles. Companies receive thousands of deceptive, indecent and irking e-mails in bulk on a regular basis. Spam is a jargon used commonly to express discarded, undesirable and promotional e-mails or junk e-mails. Spam is not an abbreviation or acronym (so spam does not denote something). Normally a spam mail contains commercial content and it is send to receivers who never reqeusted to get that kind of information from the business or individual that sends it.

Getting huge volume of unwanted commercial e-mails can significantly cost the individuals and businesses a lot of time and resources as they have to sort out the legitimate mails, removing the unsolicited messages and this process, at times, become very exhaustive and frustrating, thus hindering efficiency.

Getting rid of spam is a lengthy process, it hurts e-mail server performance and malevolent e-mails are a threat to network security Furthermore, the company also faces the risk as these spam mails might lead to irreparable harm to the systems, thus causing disorder and big loss of work and capital to the company.

Professional help and assistance is the most effective way to avoid the threat from spam and ensure protection and safety. Thus, the server should be shielded to assure that all the passing information is filtered and fire-walled against spam. Typically, a server spam filter is a software application that scrutinizes the incoming messages, spotting spam on the basis of pre-determined configurations while detaching the unwanted e-mail so that it never reaches the users inbox. One of the often used mail servers is the Exchange Server developed by Microsoft, and this product from Microsoft makes core mail services fast and reliable.

Spam devices can be of great help to carry out filtering at an exchange server or malicious e-mail blocking at exchange server. A server spam filter facilitates the users to automate the spam removal procedure at the server level - the receiving source before it reaches the network of personal computers. Making this process automatic is recommended as it protects each personal computer, it protects the internal network and prevents work loss and users’ downtime.

As the anti-spam technology cant be taken as perfect, conducting a manual checking by network administrator is a suitable measure to scrutinize the periodically filtered out messages to ensure that the exchange server spam filter is not detecting messages that are not really spam.