Lots of dangerous Spam email getting past spam filters

[Galdorf]

Have a customer very small business no employees has one computer with outlook lately spam has been getting past filters they contain ransomware that encrypts data need to find a way pref free to block this stuff.
The amount has been growing like nothing i have seen even my office computer is getting 10-20 a day that get past filtering not sure how?.

 

[ccritchie]

What kinds of filtering does the client have in place?

 

[Galdorf]

What kinds of filtering does the client have in place?

Standard outlook spam filters.

 

[fencepost]

There are a variety of third-party spam filtering services if the client is using their own domain - I'm sure some folks here can suggest options.

Some of the antivirus packages also include detection and blocking, for example BitDefender Total Security version includes spam/virus checking on inbound email.

 

[ccritchie]

You definitely should encourage the client to put something in place (Outside of Outlook) which would block most of this. Email filtering, with the ability to quarantine, is pretty much an essential for businesses these days, Maxmail (via Maxfocus) could be one option that could be offered to the client fairly inexpensively. Hosted Exchange also has spam filtering built-in. If the client is still using "free" email (yahoo, gmail, aol, etc.), this would be a perfect time to "upgrade" the client to business-class email, along with the explanation that these types of issues are one reason why consumer-grade email is not recommended for business.

The filters in Outlook are decent, but if the client's email address is on a spammer's list, which is likely being re-sold to other spammers over and over, it will be a continual battle unless you can put something at the edge to prevent this.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Standard outlook spam filters.

That's false advertising at best. Outlook spam filtering is a joke.

 

[AndyM]

That's false advertising at best. Outlook spam filtering is a joke.

Outlook never lets spam through....

You may want to look at Roaring Penguin as an Anti Spam and email filtering solution.

Andy

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

If this is a business, ditch the residential grade POP e-mail, move them to a good biz grade host with decent spam filters.
Like other said...Outlooks spam filtering isn't that great. You have to maintain your Microsoft updates for it to be even marginally effective..as it gets definition updates similar to antivirus. Without updates..it's useless. But even with updates...not the best.

For POP...a good spam filter I remember is a product by CloudMark.
http://www.cloudmarkdesktop.com/

 

[BlazonTech]

One thing I realized is that the anti-spam filter (Max, Roaring) has not been very useful in preventing the latest virus (cryptolock) from getting through. These email are structured to look like actual email and their attachment are in .PDF which the spam filter will let through.

 

[frase]

That's false advertising at best. Outlook spam filtering is a joke.

What would you recommend in filtering?

 

[Galdorf]

If this is a business, ditch the residential grade POP e-mail, move them to a good biz grade host with decent spam filters.
Like other said...Outlooks spam filtering isn't that great. You have to maintain your Microsoft updates for it to be even marginally effective..as it gets definition updates similar to antivirus. Without updates..it's useless. But even with updates...not the best.

For POP...a good spam filter I remember is a product by CloudMark.
http://www.cloudmarkdesktop.com/

Gave it a try very easy to use just what i was looking for it caught a real nasty email that looked like it was from a customer sending a scanned receipt in as a bookkeeper she gets those all the time it got rid of it before she could click on it.

 

[nlinecomputers]

What would you recommend in filtering?

I would go with what others have recommended. Moving to a business grade email service like Office 365 or even hosted exchange with Rackspace. MaxMail provides excellent filtering that you can put on top of that.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Gave it a try very easy to use just what i was looking for it caught a real nasty email that looked like it was from a customer sending a scanned receipt in as a bookkeeper she gets those all the time it got rid of it before she could click on it.

Yeah it's still a great service..they've really ramped up their security offerings. They even offer a safe DNS service similar to OpenDNS.

 

[fencepost]

I was going to go through a bunch of threads from the last year and a half or so and perhaps do a summary of the cloud and non-cloud email filtering options people have suggested in various threads, but may not have a chance to do so today.