Cost Assessment of Email Filtering Suspicious Image Attachments
About the Image Filtering & Assessment Costing Tool
The Image Filtering & Assessment Costing Tool has been created to estimate email volumes, costs and staff resources required in the filtering and reviewing of business emails (with suspicious image attachment content) that have been stopped when using a corporate email 'image analysis / pornography / porn' filtering system.
Purpose of the Image Filtering & Assessment Costing Tool
The purpose of this tool is to calculate the estimated volume of suspicious email messages that will be:
- stopped by your 'image filtering / porn filter' system as it may contain suspect pornographic images
- redirected to an human 'assessor' to manually review the contents of these suspicious email messages
- assessed to be a true positive (i.e. it does have pornographic content) or a false positive (i.e. it does not contain any inappropriate content)
...and to estimate the staff time needed:
- for the nominated 'Email Assessor' to manually assess and review suspect emails and to confirm cases of pornographic content
- for Human Resources to investigate and document the evidence required to process a formal disciplinary case - where an email incident containing pornographic content has been assessed and confirmed
- for an IT System Administrator to investigate, to search for computer evidence, to take all the relevant backups, and to produce the relevant documentation to support formal disciplinary proceedings
The tool will report the estimated annual costs to process suspicious email message image attachments internally (in-house) and then use these annual cost to calculate the potential annual savings your organisation can make by outsourcing the processing and management of this suspicious email content to Dicontas.
If you would like to calculate the annual cost for assessing suspicious email message content then use the
Content Filtering & Assessment Costing Tool.
How to use the Image Filtering & Assessment Costing Tool
Quick Use:
To use this free online tool, please complete the first four green boxes (sections 1 & 3 below) with values to match the utilisation of your corporate email system and your annual staff costs - leave all white boxes with their default timings.
Press the 'Calculate Volumes & Costs' button (after section 5) to calculate the corresponding email volumes and estimated staff costs.
Custom Use:
You can additionally modify the default timings in all of the white boxes (sections 1, 2 & 4) to match your specific company working conditions, company email traffic volumes, and your vendor's email filter specifications. The default values used are representative of industry average values and best guess times for specific work activities.
If you change any time values in section 4, the Total Time values will be automatically re-calculated.
The last green box (section 5. Ratio of Informal vs. Formal Disciplinary Actions Raised) is used to assess the ratio of confirmed email abuse cases (where one of your employees have sent an outbound email containing pornographic images) that will result in formal discipline action being taken. This figure is usually 1:1 ratio, meaning that every confirmed case of sending an email with pornography will result in formal discipline actions. Please adjust this ratio (e.g. 2:1, 5:1) if you believe that some email abuse incidents will only result in a specific amount (ratio) of informal discipline actions.
Once you have modified all the green/white boxes to your requirements, then press the 'Calculate Volumes & Costs' button (after section 5) to calculate the corresponding email volumes and estimated staff costs.
Disclaimer
This tool is used to calculate indicative values only - all values are based on best estimates (or based on data in published internet-usage analysis reports sourced from reputable external companies).
Dicontas cannot be held responsible for any data, or any cost / observations / findings deduced from the use of this tool.
Explanation of Definitions Used
- An Image Filter is an image analysis software program/system that scans email attachments (image and graphic files) to identify pornographic content
- True Positive - is where an email has been correctly identified and stopped by the Image Filter as it contains actual pornographic images
- False Positive - is where an email has been incorrectly stopped by an Image Filter. An example may be a person in summer dress where the computer algorithm has picked up too much flesh tones in the photo
Image Filtering & Assessment Costing Tool
| 1. | Company / Email Volume Details | ||||
| 1.1 | Number of company users (mailboxes) able to send/receive mail via internet |
||||
| 1.2 | Average amount of messages sent/ received per day per user |
||||
| 1.3 | Number of working days per year | ||||
| 2. | Email Filter Variables | ||||
| 2.1 | Ratio of messages with clean content against those with suspicious images |
: 1 | |||
| 2.2 | Estimated email filter accuracy to detect pornographic images |
||||
| 2.2.1 | True Positives (%) | % | =100% | ||
| 2.2.2 | False Positives (%) | % | |||
| 2.3 | Estimated email direction flow of pornographic images |
||||
| 2.3.1 | Inbound (%) | % | =100% | ||
| 2.3.2 | Outbound (%) | % | |||
| 3. | Annual Staff Costs | ||||
| 3.1 | Image Content Assessor (a trusted manager/senior staff member who will review and assess suspicious images) |
£ | |||
| 3.2 | HR Administrator (who will prepare an internal investigation and disciplinary action case) |
£ | |||
| 3.3 | IT Administrator (who will analyse, export, and backup mailboxes and Mail server log files) |
£ | |||
| 4. | Incident Task Variables (each time a suspicious email has been captured and needs processed) |
Inbound Incident |
Outbound Incident |
||
| 4.1 | True Positive Incidents | ||||
| 4.1.1 | Image Content Assessor Tasks: | ||||
| 4.1.1.1 | Average time taken to assess suspicious message content |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.1.2 | To raise and complete a report for an authorised investigation |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.1.3 | To pass all relevant details to IT Administrator |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.1.4 | Total Time | mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.2 | HR Administrator Tasks: | ||||
| 4.1.2.1 | To produce an HR Incident Report | mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.2.2 | Necessary follow-ups between departments |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.2.3 | Total Time | mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3 | IT Administrator Tasks: | ||||
| 4.1.3.1 | Analyse raised HR Incident Report | mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.2 | Search Corporate Mail server for Message-id and identify specific server logs |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.3 | Disable user's mailbox / network account |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.4 | Add external Senders addresses to inbound black-list for repeat offenders |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.5 | Investigate message forwarding to other internal mailboxes / users |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.6 | Create custom backup job to copy user's mailboxes and log files (min.) |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.7 | Document IT Incident Report | mins | mins | ||
| 4.1.3.8 | Total Time | mins | mins | ||
| 4.2 | False Positive Incidents | ||||
| 4.2.1 | Image Content Assessor Tasks: | ||||
| 4.2.1.1 | Average time taken to assess each suspicious message/images |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.2.1.2 | Forward original message onto intended recipient(s) when message is not inappropriate |
mins | mins | ||
| 4.2.1.3 | Total Time | mins | mins | ||
| 4.2.2 | HR Administrator Tasks: | ||||
| 4.2.2.1 | No tasks required | mins | mins | ||
| 4.2.2.2 | Total Time | mins | mins | ||
| 4.2.3 | IT Administrator Tasks: | ||||
| 4.2.3.1 | No tasks required | mins | mins | ||
| 4.2.3.2 | Total Time | mins | mins | ||
| 5. | Ratio of Informal vs. Formal Disciplinary Actions Raised (for employees sending outbound emails with pornographic images) |
: 1 | |||
| 6. | Estimated Volumes of Emails & Incidents | ||||
| 6.1 | Total volume of messages per year (passing through your Mail server) |
||||
| 6.2 | Inbound - true positive incidents per year | ||||
| 6.3 | Inbound - false positive incidents per year | ||||
| 6.4 | Outbound - true positive incidents per year | ||||
| 6.5 | Outbound - false positive incidents per year | ||||
| Internal | Outsourced | Savings | |||
| 7. | Estimated Variable Costs | Per Incident | Annual | Annual | Annual |
| 7.1 | Image Content Assessor Cost: | ||||
| 7.1.1 | Inbound - true positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.1.2 | Inbound - false positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.1.3 | Outbound - true positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.1.4 | Outbound - false positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.1.5 | Annual Cost | £ | |||
| 7.2 | HR Administrator Cost: | ||||
| 7.2.1 | Inbound - true positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.2.2 | Inbound - false positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.2.3 | Outbound - true positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.2.4 | Outbound - false positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.2.5 | Annual Cost | £ | |||
| 7.3 | IT Administrator Cost: | ||||
| 7.3.1 | Inbound - true positive incident | £ | £ | £ | |
| 7.3.2 | Inbound - false positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.3.3 | Outbound - true positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.3.4 | Outbound - false positive incident | £ | £ | ||
| 7.3.5 | Annual Cost | £ | |||
| 7.4 | Annual Cost for Dicontas's Assessment Services per mailbox * |
£ | £ | ||
| 7.5 | Total Annual Variable Cost | £ | £ | £ | |
| 7.6 | Average Annual Variable Cost per mailbox (user) |
£ | £ | £ | |
| 7.7 | Estimated savings by using Dicontas | (%) | |||
* Please note that the annual cost of Dicontas's services (section 7.4) will vary due to specific customer requirements (such as volume purchasing, length of contract, operational times and other custom service levels). To get an exact and up to date service cost, you will need to contact our Sales Team to obtain a sales quote based on your specific requirements.
| Quote of the Day... |
|---|
|
Email communication within the organisation is being widely used for elements of personal use by employees. |
·
·
Dicontas - servicing business needs for simplified, trouble-free and low-cost email monitoring and email filtering.
Reduce costs and achieve email compliance via outsourced email filtering administration & email assessment services.
© 2007 Dicontas Limited ®. All rights reserved.
