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5 Things the Boss Should Know About Spam Fighting

Posted by Zonk on from the never-give-up-never-surrender dept.

Esther Schindler writes "Sysadmins and email administrators were asked to identify the one thing they wish the CIO understood about their efforts to fight spam. The CIO website is now running their five most important tips, in an effort to educate the corporate brass. Recommendations are mostly along the lines of informing corporate management; letting bosses know that there is no 'silver bullet', and that the battle will never really end. There's also a suggestion to educate on technical matters, bringing executives into the loop on terms like SMTP and POP. Their first recommendation, though, is to make sure no mail is lost. 'This is a risk management practice, and you need to decide where you want to put your risk. Would you rather risk getting spam with lower risk of losing/delaying messages you actually wanted to get, or would you rather risk losing/delaying legitimate messages with lower risk of spam? You can't have both, no matter how loudly you scream.'"

5 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Why Is It? by George+Johnston · · Score: 2, Funny

    Was my spam filter installed backwards? It seems to let the ads through and trashes emails from my friends... Don't mind me, I am just auditioning for a CIO job. It pays a lot better.

    --
    Orignator of the Miserable Failure Googlebomb
  2. Uhh... you can have both... by JimDaGeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    remember, Bill Gates said he would end spam. As a "trusting" MS user, I believe him. So, since spam has ended, I don't know what these "systems" guys are complaining about. Geeez.

    --
    General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
    1. Re:Uhh... you can have both... by Jonny+do+good · · Score: 2, Funny

      remember, Bill Gates said he would end spam. As a "trusting" MS user, I believe him. So, since spam has ended, I don't know what these "systems" guys are complaining about. Geeez.

      And I am going to ditch my firewall as soon as I get Vista because Bill says it will be a secure OS.

  3. I think the most important thing is.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ..make sure it is clear to your boss that they might lose some legitimate email with porn because of spam filters.

  4. Re:WTF? by Nimloth · · Score: 2, Funny

    Do you really believe that a CIO understands all of the underlying technology in the IT department, even at a basic level? Trust me, most don't.
    QFT... I'm in the process of customizing SugarCRM Open Source for our company's needs, and after I'd pitched a demo to my CIO to show him what we'd be able to do with it once finished, he was really impressed. A week later I hear him in a meeting with management: "Yeah, it's open source, which means it's the same guys that did this that wrote Linux.".
    *shrug* At least I got management approval :P