Polunsky & Beitel, a law firm based in San Antonio, TX, is comprised of a staff of 40 including an IT department of 4. The firm specializes in residential and commercial real estate, preparing closing documents for mortgage lenders. Final deliverables are primarily provided via email, and the firm’s services are graded in part by the amount of time it takes staff to deliver on their commitments. Because of this, delays in email correspondence impact the bottom line and hinder the firm’s ability to provide services in a timely and efficient manner.
The importance of reliable email created difficulty when selecting an email protection solution, since avoiding having messages “trapped” in junk folders or blocked entirely was vital. The firm tried both Symantec’s anti-spam products and Microsoft Exchange’s Intelligent Message Filter but found with both that legitimate email correspondences were being blocked. IT staff spent up to 8 hours a week maintaining the system in place and combing through junk folders to avoid valid email messages being lost.
“There was a handful of critical messages that were lost each week, and every one was a problem,” for Mark Brzostowski, information systems director at the firm. “Between the time it took us to find a message that had entered the network but never reached its destination and the potential impact this had had on client relations, the cost associated with every one of these messages was significant.”
The risk became too high and the firm removed both solutions, opting to simply deal with the problem of unwanted and abusive email in inboxes rather than endanger client relations. However, the firm quickly realized just how problematic this was. “We became inundated with abusive, and at times, offensive, email,” said Brzostowski. “Staff began to ask for alternatives.” | The team quickly green lighted a replacement solution, and Brzostowski selected Sendio.
“The previous systems had required far too much overhead, and even then they weren’t delivering the way we needed them to,” said Brzostowski. “Sendio approached the problem differently, and in a way that made sense for our firm.”
Rather than filtering messages based on analyzing message text (frequently called “content filtering”), Sendio filters messages based on the reputation of the email sender. Senders who are on the organization’s whitelist have a “perfect” reputation and their messages are immediately delivered, while new senders are given the opportunity to automatically be added after verifying that the email originates from a valid sending mail server and domain. Conversely, users can also create their own blacklists of senders who they determine are unnecessary or abusive.
This whitelist-based system mitigates the risks associated with email deliverability and lost messages at the firm. Polunsky & Beitel users are now firmly in control of their email, every legitimate email from a client is delivered and all the offensive junk and dangerous “phishing” messages are blocked entirely.
| “The effect of Sendio was immediate,” said Brzostowski. “The disruptive, offensive email that our staff was previously receiving simply disappeared. But most importantly, every legitimate message from our clients was reaching its destination inbox.”
Brzostowski now spends closer to just ten minutes a day managing email, electing to monitor email flow into several of their most high profile email addresses. Beyond this, Sendio operates seamlessly in the background, no longer requiring the hours of tweaking and tuning previously dedicated to their Symantec and Microsoft systems.
“Sendio is the best solution on the market that I have found,” said Brzostowski. “It secured our email without negatively impacting the business.”
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