US businesses warned of system overload as staff email thanksgiving photos and videos

Small businesses across America could be under threat, experts warned today, as Thanksgiving Day approaches. All across America people will be coming together to offer thanks and hold family gatherings, preparing special thanksgiving meals and taking part in thanksgiving parades. But as employees return to work it is expected that they will send photographs and even videos as huge email attachments.

New York based messaging and collaboration software company Softalk says that as small and medium sized businesses don’t have their own large IT departments to manage and monitor their email system they will be particularly under threat.

“Email is now vital for many small and medium sized businesses and has even overtaken many traditional methods of business communication like telephone and post,” said Simon Bates, joint CEO of Softalk. “So I can’t stress enough how important it is for small and medium sized firms to make sure they have an up to date system that can cope, too many businesses make the mistake of relying on outdated systems which will leave them vulnerable to collapse.”

By following these simple steps Softalk say businesses can protect their systems against collapse:

• Set limits for maximum size of attachments that can be sent and received through the email server
• Prevent employees using the email server for storing huge files of personal photographs and videos by setting quotas for individual users mailboxes
• Prevent users from sending or receiving certain types of attachment using the email server
• Prevent viruses getting in disguised as holiday photos by installing up to date anti-virus filters
• Cut down on the unproductive email clogging up users in-boxes by installing anti-spam filters
• Always ensure that filters are up to date without the need to update every individual user’s PC by implementing anti-virus and anti-spam security at the email server level
• Make sure your employees understand how they are allowed to use the company email system for personal use by having clear policies in place
• Ensure that policies include rules to ensure that employees don’t send or receive inappropriate images
• Check that your email server is robust enough and has the capacity to cope with the demands of today’s email traffic which has increased from an average of 15 billion emails a day in 2001 to an average of 132 billion a day in 2005.
• Ensure that you are backing up and archiving your email database on a frequent and regular basis


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About Softalk
Softalk provides a range of messaging, collaboration and contact relationship management software solutions specifically designed to benefit small to medium size businesses. Softalk was set up in 1993 and is a privately held company headquartered in Maidenhead in the UK with a US office in New York. Customers include American Express, British Chamber of Commerce, Cancer Research, Cap Gemini France, Cisco, Lufthansa and Xerox. Its products include Softalk Collaboration Suite which includes WorkgroupMail, an email server for small businesses; WorkgroupShare to enable organisations to share Outlook folders without the need for Microsoft Exchange; and Softalk Organizer, a web-based collaboration client enabling users to share calendars, contacts and email. OfficeTalk is a low cost contact and customer relationship management solution enabling the whole team to share corporate information. For more information visit www.softalkltd.com or join in the conversation at our blog at talk.softalkltd.com


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For further media information please contact:
Stuart Bruce, Bruce Marshall Associates LLP, stuartb@brucemarshallassociates.com
+44 (0)20 7870 5322 / +44 (0)113 282 5321 / +44 (0)7900 985960