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SOUTHFIELD, MI (September 2002) —
Spam email can be maddening, especially in a corporate setting. But does it really affect corporate
performance and profitability? Here's what one top ore producer learned. |
There is nothing cushy about open pit mining. From their house-sized electric shovels to dump trucks that each
weigh as much as a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, open pit mining companies run big, hard, dirt -- and most of all, lean.
One of the world's biggest open pit mining operations is located in the Western United States.
One of the largest excavations on the planet, it can even be seen from outer space. Yet the company operating
this mine does so using a workforce of just 1,700 -- and only 1,200 of those are computer equipped.
In mid-2001, the company began hearing complaints about the amount of junk email clogging employee inboxes.
"Levels of spam were so bad that some staffers were having a hard time getting work done," said a
company network engineer. "We realized we had to do something to deal with the problem."
After examining several alternative email filtering products, the mining company chose Computer Mail Services'
Praetor, a rules-based anti-virus/anti-spam filtering firewall application. "Many filtering products on the
market are relatively difficult to use," noted one company IT worker. "Praetor has very effective
filtering and analysis capability. It also has the capacity to keep up with corporate-level email flows."
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This customer is going to save at least $15000 to $25000 this year with Praetor.
Their Praetor license paid for itself in 3 months.
How much can you save?
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Praetor provides a number of powerful features that help companies reduce and/or quarantine questionable email,
both incoming and outgoing. The application sits in front of any Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino server,
rejecting or quarantining email according to user-defined filtering rules including keywords or file extensions.
Depending on message volume, Praetor installs as a Windows service either on the server or on a separate
Windows NT/2000 workstation. The application can significantly improve enterprise operation not only by eliminating
unwanted or objectionable email, but also by stopping confidential or sensitive email from exiting the company.
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In Q4 of 2001, the mining company loaded Praetor onto a standalone PC. Installation was easy, according to the
company, due to the product's compatibility with the Microsoft Exchange email platform. "CMS tech support was
very quick to respond whenever we had a question," the network engineer said.
Once Praetor was up and running, the company immediately noticed several positive changes -- including one it
didn't fully anticipate. "We knew viruses were getting into our LAN on occasion, but we didn't realize how
often," stated the engineer. "Praetor was quarantining a huge number of .EXE files that contained viruses.
What's more, it was reducing the number of infected messages that were reaching the other corporate LANs we're
connected to."
Company statistics tell the full extent of Praetor's impact. In December 2001, Praetor's first complete month
of operation, 31% of all the enterprise's 113,152 incoming emails were blocked for violating various spam,
virus, or commercial advertising rules. On the outbound side, 15% of all outgoing email was rejected or
quarantined -- a number the company believes was largely due to virus replication.
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2001 |
2002 |
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December |
January |
February |
March |
Totals |
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Total Inbound |
113,152 |
116,504 |
118,163 |
139,512 |
487,331 |
| Accepted |
77,634 |
63,972 |
55,138 |
58,513 |
255,257 |
| Blocked |
35,518 |
52,532 |
63,025 |
80,999 |
232,074 |
| Percent Blocked |
31% |
45% |
53% |
58% |
48% |
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Reason for Block |
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| Reject |
15,749 |
18,533 |
20,966 |
29,229 |
84,477 |
| Deny |
12,692 |
30,979 |
40,466 |
50,148 |
134,285 |
| Quarantine |
7,077 |
3,020 |
1,593 |
1,622 |
13,312 |
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2001 |
2002 |
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December |
January |
February |
March |
Totals |
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Total Outbound |
20,174 |
22,410 |
21,646 |
21,205 |
85,435 |
| Accepted |
17,073 |
21,624 |
21,546 |
21,107 |
81,350 |
| Blocked |
3,101 |
786 |
100 |
98 |
4,085 |
| Percent Blocked |
15% |
4% |
0.5% |
0.5% |
5% |
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Reason for Block |
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| Reject |
472 |
709 |
6 |
10 |
1,197 |
| Quarantine |
2,629 |
77 |
94 |
88 |
2,888 |
In the months since, the results have become even more dramatic. Blocked outbound email has dropped substantially
as the number of viruses has plummeted. In fact, some months have shown a stopped outbound percentage of just 0.5%.
On the incoming side, however, the numbers and percentages have grown as the mining company fine-tuned its
filtering rules from the factory-default presets. In August 2002, a whopping 67.8% of all the company's 258,000
incoming emails were blocked from reaching employee inboxes -- over 174,000 potentially harmful emails that
otherwise would have disrupted work and frustrated workers.
A little math reveals the true cost of spam to an enterprise of this size. If even 70,000 objectionable emails
are blocked per month -- and using 1,200 employees as the user base-roughly 3 junk mails per day per employee
are being encountered.
On an annual basis, assuming an average cost1 of $25 per employee and five wasted seconds for each message to
be dealt with, the total corporate cost of spam is nearly $30,000 according to the spam calculator on the CMS website.
In such a case, the anti-virus/anti-spam solution implemented with Praetor paid for itself in under four months,
with profits from increased productivity to follow thereafter.
Praetor's positive effect has caused the mining operation to recommend it to the company's parent organization.
"Our business is owned by a corporation with 35,000 employees in 40 countries worldwide," the IT administrator
concluded. "Already they are evaluating the software for broader deployment. Praetor has clearly proven its
worth with us.”
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