Retailer improves accuracy of junk e-mail filtering using Microsoft's Forefront Client Security technology 

Posted: 05/17/2007

King of Shaves offers more than 100 grooming products for men and women through international retail stores and online store www.shave.com. Each product is linked to a customer care e-mail address, and this generates a lot of junk mail. In fact, spam accounts for more than 90 per cent of e-mail messages received by King of Shaves.   Because employees use e-mail and the Internet for more than half of all business activities and 95 per cent of customer correspondence is conducted using e-mail, King of Shaves relies heavily on filtering and security features.

Four years ago, the company began using Microsoft® Forefront™ Client Security to create a secure environment for all its desktops, portable computers, and server operating systems. Running on the Microsoft Exchange Server platform, Forefront Client Security helps detect, anticipate, and filter viruses. By establishing company-specific guidelines, Forefront helps businesses choose which e-mail messages are legitimate. This is essential for King of Shaves because a lot of genuine communications—such as marketing brochures and product information requests—arrive in familiar junk-mail form.

Nicky Springle, Customer Care Manager, King of Shaves, says: “Flexibility is very important. Our different departments receive e-mail messages from companies all over the world and need to be able to choose whether to let certain communications in. We can change our own rulings, and Forefront will scan anything it suspects as virus or junk. It is nearly always spot-on, and what goes into quarantine is 99.5 per cent junk.”

With greatly reduced quantities of junk e-mail hitting the company’s business server, the system is now running faster and more reliably. “Our business server used to run very slowly,” Springle says. “By installing Forefront, we’ve cut down on a great amount of junk, and our whole network runs better.”