Receiving loads of spam emails can be very frustrating and worse when they contain harmful attachments, which could potentially be a virus, etc. that affects the privacy of your data. These spam emails leak the most secure and confidential business information to conn artists, competitors, and more. With such activities, your business may not only risk better business opportunities, it may also loose current customers, clients to competitors. It affects the overall productivity of your business with employee frustration, stress going up in spending long hours deleting these emails, and trying to block such email ids.

A recent study finds that spam accounts for close to 78% of all the email exchanged across the world. The estimated costs of spending productive hours deleting this huge amount of spam is about USD 712 per each employee every year. Well, these findings are alarming and cause serious worry to many businesses, especially to small businesses that cannot afford such a hit on their productivity.

Spam filtering for small businesses is a great way to protect their data confidentiality and improve employee productivity. Acting as protective shields these spam filters scan the incoming email message to see if the email contains any of the keywords branded as spam message, and rejects such emails. As such, spam filters help keeps junk emails away from employee inbox, and save their time. Some of the benefits of spam filters for small businesses are:

• Protection: Unsolicited marketing emails can clog your inbox with numerous emails sent every day. According to a report, some 180 billion spam messages reach inboxes worldwide every day. Your employees may receive a considerable portion of such messages and waste time deleting them. Spam filters help your organization identify and block such messages from reaching your inbox, so you do not have to waste time manually deleting them and can concentrate on productive tasks.

• Prevention: Spam filters offer great help in identifying and preventing the emails that contains virus, and other threats that put your data at risk. Such emails, when allowed into your inbox, and upon clicking on those messages, may cause a system shutdown. Such a spyware may threaten the data integrity and confidentiality of your organization. Spam filters keep such risks at bay by blocking emails that contain suspicious keywords, etc. from reaching your inbox.

• Compliance: Companies have to comply strictly with all the rules and regulations as stated by the regulatory bodies of different regions. Failure to comply with any or all rules results in huge financial penalties, lawsuits, and other causalities. Spam filters help companies in complying with all the regulations as prescribed by the governing bodies, and hence companies can save themselves from the embarrassment of lawsuits, and protect themselves against financial and other forms of penalties.

• Protect your brand image and reputation: The image of your company could take a beating if the confidential data of your customers leaks and goes in to the hands of unscrupulous elements. Similarly, companies may loss big, if private data of clients gets into the hands of unauthorized parties. Spam filters offer protection of data, and prevent its unauthorized use, or leakage, thereby helps companies retain their business reputation and brand image.

Deciding to have a spam filtering system is a great investment for your business that can boost your employee productivity. Based on your business needs and the kinds of spam you receive you can choose to have an appropriate spam filtering system. You can also customize your settings so you do not receive mails form a certain source you consider as spam, or block certain list of emails following the industry standards.

Well, choosing the right kind of spam filtering system that effectively weeds out all the unwanted, and dangerous emails from reaching your inbox is a great help in improving your productivity, protecting your brand image, and business reputation.