Hi Esther, If you would like just a quick blurb, then my response to your question, “If you could get your CIO (or top management) to understand one thing, just ONE thing, about fighting spam, what would it be?“, is simple:
I would like top management to understand the mechanics of how email works. Then, and I believe only then, would they be able to grasp the concepts that elude most users of email. The how and why spam gets through filters and applications that cost thousands of dollars - even with ongoing subscription services. And why it is important to the financial bottom line to properly combat spam because of both the wasted man-hours for users dealing with deleting spam, as well as the email administrator with managing filters and dealing assisting users. My spam filter of choice is the Anti-Spam SMTP Proxy (ASSP). Not because of the fact that it is a free Open Source product, but because of its unmatched versatility. It has the widest feature set of any anti-spam application I have ever used. Using a multitude of techniques, ASSP stops a vast majority of spam before the message body is sent - which can be a significant bandwidth and processing time savings. As a bonus, ASSP is a Perl application, which means it can run on any operating system that can run Perl. Which means it can run on just about any modern operating system on any hardware platform. ASSP may have a steeper learning curve than most commercial applications, but the benefit to administrators and to the company is well worth it. Please let me know if you would like me to elaborate further. Best of luck with your article! Sincerely, Micheal Espinola Jr. Network Administrator Massachusetts Bar Association Boston Massachusetts, USA I also own and maintain the wiki dedicated to ASSP at, http://www.asspsmtp.org cc: assp-user@lists.sourceforge.net Esther Schindler wrote: > Hi, folks. I'm senior online editor at CIO.com, and I'm working on an > article for which I'd very much like your help. > > There's often a lack of communication between techies and top company > management. Maybe they don't want to hear about problems; perhaps you > give them technical details that are far more granular than they want > to know. But dealing with spam is a topic that every e-mail admin has > to cope with -- and I'm not sure that the CIO knows the real issues. > > I have the ear of the boss, however. Essentially, I'm trying to put > together the collected wisdom of e-mail and network admins in a > fashion that CIOs will understand. Or at least one teeny corner of it. > > So I have a very simple question to pose to you: > > ***If you could get your CIO (or top management) to understand one > thing, just ONE thing, about fighting spam, what would it be?*** > > And the follow-up: why did you pick that one item? > > Feel free to share anecdotes, horror stories, even success stories. > While I hope that every CIO will read this article, I also hope that > it becomes the document you bring to a new manager ("Here: this is > what's important to me"). > > I'm sure there are plenty of other things that you wish your CIO > grokked, whether about e-mail administration or other topics (not the > least of which is "the e-mail admin is underpaid"). But I do have to > limit myself somehow, and "what's important about fighting spam" has > a lot of leeway. > > I'll be sure to stop by here (as I expect others want to participate > in the conversation), but feel free to cc me with your response or > send me a private message. > > I'm hoping for a rather fast turnaround on this article, so please > blurt out your first thoughts rather than plan on writing a nice, > leisurely response. If all goes well, I'd like to get this article > posted in the next couple of weeks. > > Please be sure to let me know how to refer to you in the article; the > usual format is &name, &title, &company and &location ("Esther > Schindler is a senior developer at the Groovy Corporation in > Scottsdale Arizona"). If you give me some kind of context I'm willing > to work without one. That is, I do need some identifying > characteristics to give the article credibility ("Esther works at a > large finance company in the Southwest"). > > Esther Schindler > senior online editor, CIO.com > http://blogs.cio.com/blog/37 > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT > Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your > opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash > http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV > _______________________________________________ > Assp-user mailing list > Assp-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/assp-user > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Assp-user mailing list Assp-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/assp-user
