With all these options though, comes the issue of false positives. Enterprises are not only concerned with how much spam they can trap, but want to know that all legitimate e-mails are coming through, according to anti-spam host WebCentral's CEO Andrew Spicer.
"You can use algorithms to detect the signatures of good mail, which will also be recognised by our databases for individual clients. If this fails, our customers can still go into their "canned" mail and look to see if there is something classed as junk that may be legit."False positives were a big problem for marketing company Smartype. Director Sue Wickendon says her staff would receive hundreds of e-mails advertising Viagra and pornography each day, and lose lots of positives e-mails as a result of this spam.
Smartype trialled a new product by Web-Central called SpamDefend -- soon to be released. Wickendon says since then, the company has only suffered one percent of the spam they previously did, and in two months of use it has totally taken false positives out of the equation.
Losing control
Symantec's Gordon says the final decision to go with a hosted anti-spam provider should rest on your ability to manage your current situation. "If you have a few people pulling out their hair trying to manage software spam quarantine, you could be better off with a hosted solution. Or if you see it is a cost-effective way of dealing with it," he says.
Gordon says many hosted services will be able to deliver anti-spam more effectively for SMEs or large organisations.
"Different customers will have different requirements, and hosted providers can tailor this for you," Gordon says.
"Customer A may want all spam blocked in the Internet cloud before the mail gets sent down to them, whereas customer B may want everything scanned only for viruses before the mail is sent, but they may want to sift through it all and decide on what is spam content themselves."
Sopho's Richmond says for the SMB, the decision to go with a host can mean lower costs and less fuss. He says it is how the software is managed by the host and the infrastructure they use that makes the defining difference.
"Hosted solutions offer convenience for most people -- it can have a lower cost of ownership and you don't have to have someone administering the software. "Richmond says.
"All you have to do is plug your mail through a hosted solution -- you don't have to worry about it after that."
"Hosted solutions do, however, become a lot less attractive if you are using encrypted mail systems and trying to have confidential things being run through your system because obviously you will have someone else managing your mail flow."
But for the Australian employees in small business, who spend so much of their time canning spam, hosted solutions seem to offer saved time and a low-cost way of dealing with an issue that is not going to go away.
Dahlgren says with spam predicted to be on the rise in coming years, hosted solutions will certainly gain a lot more clout in the SMB arena, further increasing options for anti-spam provision.
I think hosted anti-spam IS the answer. I use the Gmail solution: http://www.iopus.com/guides/gmail-spam-filter.htm