The hospital reported that from November 7 - December 4, 2006, Espion's Interceptor averaged an accuracy rate of greater than 99.99 percent in preventing spam messages from reaching Down East Community Hospital during this period. The Interceptor appliance analyzed more than 3.62 million e-mails sent to DECH addresses, an average of more than 129,600 every day, of which more than 87.75 percent were correctly identified as spam.
"We were inundated with spam, and our managers were constantly complaining," said Sheldon Skeate, Down East's Information Service Manager. "We tried a service provider, but they would have been too expensive over the long term. And it was a real pain to constantly change and alter our Exchange server and firewall every day." In addition, Skeate noted that the deluge of spam resulted in lost productivity at the hospital, a small community institution whose limited resources are often strained.
The Interceptor automatically quarantined e-mail messages before they reached end-users' inboxes at Down East Community Hospital, thanks to the Espion Probabilistic Reasoning (EPR) engine, which delivers a smart, simple, and secure solution. The EPR engine, a breakthrough hybrid artificial intelligence solution, learns to recognize key patterns throughout an organization's e-mail flow, providing exceptional inbound threat protection, as well as outbound content policy management, without time- and cost-intensive human intervention or updating of policies.
"Keeping our Interceptor current is a snap," said Skeate. "Every day, new spams are being created, but we see fewer and fewer." He added that on an average day, only eight spam messages may make it past the Interceptor, an infinitesimal fraction of the total number of spams caught by the integrated appliance. The time that was being spent combating spam is now being redirected into patient care, allowing Down East personnel to focus on delivering quality healthcare to the communities it serves.
Skeate also said he anticipates the Interceptor's built-in encryption capabilities will help Down East meet HIPAA privacy requirements. "We're very pleased with the Interceptor," he said. "Our time savings are way up, and the frustration level is way down."
