UK IT managers could be spending more than five million
working hours, worth more than £140m a year, searching for valid
e-mails caught inspam filters, according to a survey
commissioned by web-based email management service provider,
Mimecast.
Research firm e-Media surveyed more than 100 IT managers and
found that 26% checked their e-mail quarantine every day and 12%
checked it twice a day.
Using
E-Skills figures of 270,000 IT managers in the UK and average
hourly rates, and allowing 10 minutes for each check, e-Media said
a lack of confidence in the accuracy of spam-detection systems
could be costing business 5.85 million working hours worth £140.4m
a year.
The figures could be even higher, with the survey showing that
16% of those surveyed checked their e-mail quarantine for
"continually" for incorrectly captured messages.
According to the survey, 10% said their business was severely
affected by delays in the delivery of e-mails and 7% said important
e-mail was incorrectly classified as junk mail on a daily
basis.
Peter Bauer, chief executive of Mimecast, blamed the
inefficiencies of many anti-spam products on the fact that they use
a content-scoring approach to identify spam.
"This approach is flawed because it looks at the actual content
of messages and calculates a score based on the type of words and
links, but many legitimate e-mails in the legal, pharmaceutical and
financial sectors include content associated with spam," said
Bauer.
He said more effective e-mail management could be achieved by
examining e-mail messages before they reach company e-mail servers
and either accepting or rejecting them based on whether they come
from a trusted contact or not.