Tag Archives: Mike Song

About 1935 days ago Computer Security

Fight Spam in Six Steps

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No, they haven’t found a cure for spam yet. But until then, it’s still a fight worth fighting. According to a March 2007 survey by Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus Research, two out of every three e-mail messages received on the job are unwanted or unsolicited. All that spam costs U.S. businesses $70 billion — or $712 per employee per year in productivity alone, the same study estimated. And that’s not counting the losses due to viruses, worms and Trojans it spreads, or the identity or trade secret theft it can cause. What can a small or mid-sized business do, especially if your IT department is on the smaller side, too? Here are some tips from the experts: Consider a Hosted Service: If you don’t have the staff or the time to fight spam properly, perhaps a hosted service such as Google-owned Postini or MessageLabs is for you, suggests Joe Stewart, senior security researcher with SecureWorks, an information security firm based in Atlanta. Hosted services offer spam blocking, extensive anti-virus coverage, and disaster recovery services for about $100/month for under 100 users. Install a Good Spam Filter: SecureWorks’ Stewart recommends some open-source filters, such as Apache’s SpamAssassin. High Mountain Software’s SpamEaterPro and CA Anti-Spam are among the many vendor-provided options that work well with a number of different email servers. Safeguard Those Addresses: Make sure the workers in your office are not using their work email address to conduct personal business, or for online shopping. Ditto for FaceBook, MySpace, or other social-network sites…spammers often look to these for new addresses. Also, discourage workers from signing up for newsletters with their work email address. Block Sender: Make sure all workers using Outlook and Lotus Notes know to right-click and “block sender” on a piece of spam so that the sender cannot send anything else to that address, notes Mike Song, an email efficiency expert, corporate trainer, and CEO of Guilford, Conn.-based CohesiveKnowledge Solutions Inc. Take Out Website Links: “Be careful how you list worker directories on your corporate website,” warns SecureWorks’ Stewart. If you must list workers’ email addresses, publish them inside Javascript, not as an email link, he suggests. Set a Spam Trap: Consider creating a fake employee profile, complete with bogus title and address, on the website. Monitor what e-mail comes to this “employee,” since it is likely to be spam, suggests Stewart. Use it as a test of how well your anti-spam techniques are working. By trying these steps, your business can have the upper hand in the war against spam. But diligence remains key: “Remember that the spammers actively test the anti-spam software,” notes Stewart. “You can’t just install the software and have the problem go away.” SIDEBAR: Where to Go for Spam-Fighting Help Postini is a hosted solution that screens email for malware and spam and offers back-up and archiving services. It serves about 10 million end users. MessageLabs is a hosted solution that screens email and instant messages for malware, spam and spim. It offers back-up and archiving services. SpamAssassin is an open-source-based spam filter written in Perl. It can be downloaded free from the above website. High Mountain Software’s SpamEaterPro is a widely used spam-fighting software program. The company also offers a hosted spam-fighting product, spameater.net. CA Anti-Spam is another popular anti-spam software product that includes anti-virus, anti-phishing, and other features.

About 1997 days ago E-Commerce

Putting the Kibosh on Internal Spam

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These days, not even the pros are immune from getting too much internal e-mail. Just ask the San Diego Padres. “I was getting 100-150 internal e-mails a day,” recalls Richard Andersen, executive vice president of the San Diego Padres and general manager of Petco Park, the 42,000-seat stadium that the major-league ball club calls home. “It was taking me hours, and, in many cases, it was a lot of time spent on less important tasks.” Then Andersen heard a presentation by Vicki Halsey, co-author of The Hamster Revolution, a book about e-mail management, and a leadership trainer with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  He read Halsey’s book, which compares responding to endless e-mails to a hamster forever spinning on its wheel, and started taking its advice. He bought copies of the book for his 100-odd full-time employees who use e-mail. The results have been dramatic. “I’d say I’ve gotten 20-30 percent of my time back,” says Andersen. “And I’d say the people in my department have gotten about 10-15 percent of their time back.” Unwanted internal e-mail So-called “internal spam,” is unwanted e-mail generated not over the Internet, but by your colleagues in the office. It’s unnecessary “reply all” messages, chit-chat, misguided FYIs, chain letters, jokes, or those you-just-have-to-see-this links to YouTube. Because there’s no spam filter for internal postings, the result is a major time-management problem for American businesses. According to 20,000 U.S. businesses surveyed by Guilford, Conn.-based Cohesive Knowledge Solutions, an e-mail training firm, more than 40 percent of the average workers’ day is spent managing e-mail. Of that, between 20 percent and 30 percent is unnecessary. The company estimates that U.S. firms are losing some $300 billion annually in lost productivity and profits to e-mail overuse. “We’re talking 40 percent of the day spent on this,” notes Mike Song, CEO of Cohesive Knowledge Solutions and one of Halsey’s co-authors. “This is time taken away from other endeavors, time that affects the work-life balance,” he says. In addition, sexually or politically inappropriate e-mails can endanger jobs and even result in lawsuits against the sender, Song warns. How to curtail internal spam Experts like Song and Matt Cain, vice president and lead email analyst at Stamford, Conn.- based Gartner, recommend in-house training to help companies use e-mail more efficiently. “People need to learn to write better subject lines, let their readers know when action is required, and when it’s just an FYI,” says Cain. But they also offer the following tips: Develop a standard. Song recommends setting some ground rules in your office for what constitutes proper use of e-mail. For starters, tell employees that chain letters, amusing photos, or website links are not welcome in the office. Nix “FYI lite” messages. Most “FYI” messages are probably irrelevant to most of the office. “Raise the bar in your office so that only timely, relevant messages get sent,” says Song. Skip “reply all.” Gone are the days when employees want to be in the loop on every e-mail, says Song. In most cases, reply only to the sender. “We had one client who removed the ‘reply all’ key from their computers, and e-mails fell by 50-60 percent in that office,” notes Song. Use “no reply needed” or “NRN” in the subject field. This will help cut down on those “thank you/you’re welcome” e-mails that gum up your in-box. Be concise in the subject field.  Start the line with terms like “Action:” “Request:” ‘Confirm:” or “Delivery:” to tell your reader what’s to follow, and what you expect from them. Is it appropriate? Think before you send that e-mail skewering a co-worker’s performance, admiring a short skirt, or poking fun at the big boss. If you wouldn’t want it appearing on the front page of the local paper, or in the CEO’s e-mail queue, hit that “cancel” button. Write tighter e-mails.  While easier said than done, try to use short sentences and paragraphs in the body. Use bullet points to save the reader time. Consider offering employees professional training. Consider e-mail alternatives. For some offices, blogs or collaborative wiki pages may be better places to have a conversation than a group e-mail thread, says Gartner’s Cain. And sometimes, picking up the phone or walking across the office to talk to a co-worker can save time, too, says Song. “E-mail isn’t always the best form of communication,” he notes.

About 1997 days ago E-mail

Putting the Kibosh on Internal Spam

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These days, not even the pros are immune from getting too much internal e-mail. Just ask the San Diego Padres. “I was getting 100-150 internal e-mails a day,” recalls Richard Andersen, executive vice president of the San Diego Padres and general manager of Petco Park, the 42,000-seat stadium that the major-league ball club calls home. “It was taking me hours, and, in many cases, it was a lot of time spent on less important tasks.” Then Andersen heard a presentation by Vicki Halsey, co-author of The Hamster Revolution, a book about e-mail management, and a leadership trainer with The Ken Blanchard Companies.  He read Halsey’s book, which compares responding to endless e-mails to a hamster forever spinning on its wheel, and started taking its advice. He bought copies of the book for his 100-odd full-time employees who use e-mail. The results have been dramatic. “I’d say I’ve gotten 20-30 percent of my time back,” says Andersen. “And I’d say the people in my department have gotten about 10-15 percent of their time back.” Unwanted internal e-mail So-called “internal spam,” is unwanted e-mail generated not over the Internet, but by your colleagues in the office. It’s unnecessary “reply all” messages, chit-chat, misguided FYIs, chain letters, jokes, or those you-just-have-to-see-this links to YouTube. Because there’s no spam filter for internal postings, the result is a major time-management problem for American businesses. According to 20,000 U.S. businesses surveyed by Guilford, Conn.-based Cohesive Knowledge Solutions, an e-mail training firm, more than 40 percent of the average workers’ day is spent managing e-mail. Of that, between 20 percent and 30 percent is unnecessary. The company estimates that U.S. firms are losing some $300 billion annually in lost productivity and profits to e-mail overuse. “We’re talking 40 percent of the day spent on this,” notes Mike Song, CEO of Cohesive Knowledge Solutions and one of Halsey’s co-authors. “This is time taken away from other endeavors, time that affects the work-life balance,” he says. In addition, sexually or politically inappropriate e-mails can endanger jobs and even result in lawsuits against the sender, Song warns. How to curtail internal spam Experts like Song and Matt Cain, vice president and lead email analyst at Stamford, Conn.- based Gartner, recommend in-house training to help companies use e-mail more efficiently. “People need to learn to write better subject lines, let their readers know when action is required, and when it’s just an FYI,” says Cain. But they also offer the following tips: Develop a standard. Song recommends setting some ground rules in your office for what constitutes proper use of e-mail. For starters, tell employees that chain letters, amusing photos, or website links are not welcome in the office. Nix “FYI lite” messages. Most “FYI” messages are probably irrelevant to most of the office. “Raise the bar in your office so that only timely, relevant messages get sent,” says Song. Skip “reply all.” Gone are the days when employees want to be in the loop on every e-mail, says Song. In most cases, reply only to the sender. “We had one client who removed the ‘reply all’ key from their computers, and e-mails fell by 50-60 percent in that office,” notes Song. Use “no reply needed” or “NRN” in the subject field. This will help cut down on those “thank you/you’re welcome” e-mails that gum up your in-box. Be concise in the subject field.  Start the line with terms like “Action:” “Request:” ‘Confirm:” or “Delivery:” to tell your reader what’s to follow, and what you expect from them. Is it appropriate? Think before you send that e-mail skewering a co-worker’s performance, admiring a short skirt, or poking fun at the big boss. If you wouldn’t want it appearing on the front page of the local paper, or in the CEO’s e-mail queue, hit that “cancel” button. Write tighter e-mails.  While easier said than done, try to use short sentences and paragraphs in the body. Use bullet points to save the reader time. Consider offering employees professional training. Consider e-mail alternatives. For some offices, blogs or collaborative wiki pages may be better places to have a conversation than a group e-mail thread, says Gartner’s Cain. And sometimes, picking up the phone or walking across the office to talk to a co-worker can save time, too, says Song. “E-mail isn’t always the best form of communication,” he notes.