Today, spam may not be regarded as the most high-profile concern, but it’s still a serious day-to-day threat. Every month, our users alone have to deal with
billions of spam messages. These are also frequently used to deliver malware using attachments or links to malicious sites.
One of the most powerful tools in dealing with spam is IP reputation. This checks the IP address that sent a particular email against addresses that are known to have sent spam messages before. These addresses come both from external sources and internal threat intelligence sources.
IP reputation is necessary because of the large volume of spam messages that all organizations have to deal with. The volume is simply too high to try and filter email based strictly on content and/or included links. IP reputation is able to catch large volumes of spam messages with relatively little resources expended by the organization. This also reduces the load on other security solutions like content and file scanning. Error messages can be sent back so the sender of the email can be informed about the reason why their messages were not accepted.
