Do spam emails waste your employees working hours?

Spam emails are an issue for everyone, individuals and businesses alike, and we have written about the many network security risks it poses to your business. Still, there are a lot of factors that affect your business and its time, money, and productivity! Let’s discuss…

What’s the big deal?

Emails are known in the corporate world as one of the biggest time wasters, and people can spend up to 61% of their day checking and responding to them! It has to be done, communicating internally and externally is crucial for so many businesses, but how much of that time is lost due to spam emails?

It may not seem like a lot, but studies have shown that the average person can spend up to 80 hours a year sorting through their emails, depending on how many external emails they receive a day.

Anywhere between 45% – 85% of emails generated are spam that could contain malicious content, so sorting through this many emails could potentially be a lot of wasted time.Â

Particularly for SMEs, time is so valuable, so letting spam emails take so much of your employee’s time isn’t something you can afford.

How can I stop this?

Spam emails are a lot easier to stop than you may think, of course, your email inbox can never be 100% free of spam, but it can come pretty close.Â

Spam and ransomware email filters are easy to install, and they use advanced technology to detect traits of spam emails and identify malicious links, images, and attachments before they even enter your inbox! This means you and your employees won’t have to waste time sifting through junk mail.

What are the other benefits?

Apart from the huge time-saving benefit of not having spam in your inbox, there are security benefits to having spam and ransomware installed in email inboxes.

The risk of spam goes far beyond time-wasting and emails containing malicious ransomware can be crippling for any business! The ransomware contained in these spam emails is extremely less likely to even end up in your employee’s inbox, eliminating the risk of you being under threat. Here are some other things you can do to help keep your inboxes free from spam and ransomware.

Training and education

Training and educating your staff should be an ongoing effort, it ensures your staff are being vigilant and are more aware of what spam and potentially malicious emails look like (if you want more information on detecting a ransomware email check out this blog post).Â

Astaris are partners with KnowBe4, an online training team, that will send you training packages as well as test emails to see how your team is learning.Â

Prevention is always better than cure, and deleting an email is a lot more time and cost-effective than dealing with the consequences of opening a malicious one!

Mail filtering systems

As previously discussed, mail filtering on your email inbox is the best way to protect it from spam and ransomware. From costs as little as £0.54 per week, it’s a no-brainer.Â

Phishing attacks have become an increasingly popular scam amongst cyber criminals and organised crime, we have all seen the obvious ones filled with spam-looking links and blatant spelling errors, but as technology advances the attacks are becoming more intelligent.Â

These emails can look seemingly normal to the human eye, therefore this intelligent mail filtering software is your best chance at detecting something you cannot see.

The bottom line…?

Time and money are wasted! A big no-no for any company of any size, productivity could be maximised by limiting the amount of spam in your inbox, as well as making sure your company data is always safe and secure.