SoftScan reveals reasons for SMBs' email delays

Hosted spam and virus email filtering company SoftScan has revealed five reasons why SMBs' inbound company email gets delayed.

SoftScan says that statistics from its technical helpdesk show that altering internal settings is the main reason, often preventing users from seeing their inbound email messages for up to 24 hours.

The company adds that although many email security products and services today do provide business continuity by enabling waiting email messages to be queued until they can be delivered, most do not allow network administrators to search for and download individual messages.

The top five reasons for the disruption of inbound email are: email server mis-configuration; email server crashes; wrong firewall settings; MX records changed incorrectly; email server running out of free space.

Phil Watts, managing director of SoftScan UK, spells out the ramifications of the problem for SMBs: "With constant patching, the introduction of new software or even just human error, it's very easy for system settings to be altered in such a way that the email flow grinds to a halt.

“For SMBs that don't have the kind of resilience set-up that larger organisations can afford, not being able to get to just one important email message in the time restraints required may impact heavily on the business."