Hospital Pulled Out Its Spam Using SAV

Suppose you were trying to send an important email to a hospital and the message failed? Cenral DuPage Hospital was faced with this problem in the heart of a leading independent healthcare network in suburban Chicago.

Glen Malan explains that they have 3,900 employees apart from over 100 doctors on the staff. The spam accumulated from 4,500 accounts each day can be massive. The other challenge being faced was to tackle spam without blocking genuine email.

A filter-based system were attempted but to no avail as far as getting rid of unwanted emails was concerned. To add to the problem, the filters blocked crucial messages like names of prescription drugs required by doctors for professional purposes.

Based on the experience there is evidence that filtering doesn't work for distinguishing legitimate email from unwanted mail or spam as no spam filter has a 100% success rate. Filtering involves a computing technique for using artificial intelligence and complex algorithms to detect wanted email from the unwanted. Though sophisticated and intricate, it was a complete failure. Taking into consideration the overwhelming growth in spam and the financial repercussions associated with spam, the need for a better solution has never been felt more keenly.

The best solution to the unwanted email problem could be Sender Address Verification (SAV). It works on the basis that all senders must identify themselves the first time they email. The only enterprise-level tool, Sendio uses sender address verification. The benefits are obvious in rejection of junk emails without any genuine sender address.

Easy to install, SAV can be highly beneficial for IT and business users alike. Using it as a stand-alone network appliance ensures that SAV is placed at the network edge, facing the corporate mail infrastructure. Only select emails are allowed into the network. Spam is never allowed to reach the messaging infrastructure, thereby easing the burden on existing resources. It is set to thwart spammers' ability to deliver machine-generated email.

Thus no spam needs to be filtered, as it never reaches the system. Spam inflow to hospital employees and medical professionals has therefore been reduced to an undetectable level.

Related article: Hospital Employees Deprived of Admin Rights to Keep Computers Secure

» SPAMfighter News - 9/5/2006