Mimecast: "Your Filters Are Missing 12 Percent Of The Unwanted Emails"

Mimecast said: "Is a false negative rate of 12% a large number or a small one? I suppose it depends on your perspective. If your email security system lets in 12 unwanted emails—whether spam, phishing, impersonations, emails containing malicious links or attachments—for every 100 unwanted emails that arrived at your organization’s doorstep, would you be okay with that?"

I will leave it to you to decide based on what you consider reasonable and acceptable. But this is what their most recent Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA) data collection and analysis has found. They have been doing this for 7 quarters and the numbers are always of concern.

In an ESRA test the Mimecast service reinspects a participating organization’s emails that were deemed safe by their incumbent email security system. The picture ain't pretty. The percentages are pretty consistent with what is being reported by Cyren, so the conclusion presents itself that about 10 to 15% of those emails wind up in your user's inbox. Yikes. Mimecast Blog post here with InfoGraphic.

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