Citynet has been adding new communities to our growing list of areas where we provide a full range of products and services.  The list continues to grow this month with the additions of Warren County, PA, Athens OH, Portsmouth OH, and West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle city of Martinsburg, WV.

Citynet looks forward to providing our next-generation communication services to these new and important communities.  If you know anyone in one of these areas, we’d love to speak with them.  They can get full information about Citynet from our website:  www.Citynet.net.

Citynet President/CEO, Jim Martin, was recently awarded the honor of being listed as a Who’s Who in West Virginia Business by The State Journal – a statewide business publication.  This is a very prestigious award and one that was well received by both Mr. Martin and Citynet. 

Who’s Who in West Virginia Business is an award that is given to a limited number of business executives from around the state.  The State Journal has been doing this award for over 10 years and some very prominent business people have been recipients in the past.  Jim joins a very distinguished group of people that have been selected in previous years. 

“The employees of Citynet are proud of our leader and we’ve always known Jim to be a superb business leader for our company and for the organizations he devotes so much time and effort with.  We know him to be a great father and family man.  Now the entire State knows what we know” said Don Molter, VP-Communications for Citynet.

Spam /’spam/
The abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages

Given today's economic climate, you must be more efficient with your IT budget. There’s no doubt email is a vital aspect of nearly every business. Therefore, keeping spam and malware out of your inboxes is a key concern.

Spam is no longer just innocuous and irritating, it now poses a variety of serious threats to your business, including:

Lost Productivity
The cost of spam in terms of lost productivity has reached $21.58 billion annually, according to the National Technology Readiness Survey conducted by the University of Maryland. The survey found that:

• Internet users in the United States spend an average of three minutes deleting spam each day they use E-mail. Multiplied across 169.4 million online adults in the United States, this comes to 22.9 million hours a week, or $21.58 billion based on an average wage.
  
• 78% of online adults receive spam daily and 11% receive at least 40 such messages. Of those, 14% read spam they receive.

A survey conducted by Nucleus Research estimated of  those businesses that quarantine spam in its own folder for review, each employee then spends an average of 4.5 minutes per week reviewing those filtered messages. Another 7.3 minutes per week are lost when employees look for legitimate emails that have been lost in the filtering process.

If you're interested in seeing just how much spam is costing your business, use our Cost of Spam Calculator. It’s free, easy and does not require you to leave any information (unless you wish to do so).

Security Threats
Spammers now use worms and viruses, and spyware and phishing scams to infect both end user systems and servers. These and other nefarious email operations can extract private, sensitive data which can then be used for identity theft schemes. Worms and viruses also eat up valuable time by IT staff to resolve the issues created by such programs.

Wasted Storage
If you quarantine spam, you must add extra storage capacity to accommodate suspicious mail for later review. But many users never bother to review their quarantined messages, so the email just sits there, growing by the minute, consuming more and more storage space and wasting money.

Let Citynet and Barracuda Networks Help You Conquer Spam

At Citynet, we are all too familiar with the challenges spam presents for businesses. As a Barracuda Certified Partner, Citynet can help your business finally prevail over spam. Here’s how:

The Barracuda Spam Firewall architecture optimizes the processing of each email to maximize performance and process millions of messages per day. Unlike software solutions, the Barracuda Spam Firewall reduces the load placed on the email server by offloading both spam and virus filtering.

In addition, all Barracuda Spam Firewall models include essential outbound filtering techniques including attachment scanning, virus filtering, rate controls and encryption. These features help organizations to ensure that all outgoing email is legitimate and virus-free.

It’s Easy to Use
With no software to install and no modifications required to existing email systems, installation of the Barracuda Spam Firewall is quick and easy. Once installed, the system administrator uses the intuitive web interface for monitoring and maintenance. With Barracuda Networks Energize Updates, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is continuously updated with the latest spam and virus definitions every hour keeping maintenance to the unit at a minimum and eliminating administrative overhead. Updates are provided by Barracuda Central, an advanced 24/7 security operations center that works to continuously monitor and block the latest Internet threats.

It’s Affordable
Barracuda Networks design and build products not only for their power and ease of use, but also for their affordability. With no per user license fees, the Barracuda Spam Firewall is the most affordable enterprise-class spam and virus solution available

Learn More
Be aware of how much spam is costing your business. Try our free, no-obligation Cost of Spam Calculator.

Once you quantify how much spam is costing your company, please give Citynet a call so we can help restore productivity and lessen your headaches.

Attend the Citynet/Barracuda Webinar
Be sure to attend our Barracuda Webinar, Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 10:00 AM

Simply make your reservation at http://rsvp.citynet.net and save your place today.