5 Features That Set an Email Security Solution Apart
An increasingly connected commercial world presents fresh challenges,
with email security standing out as a prime example. Cybercrime is on the
rise, with email traffic presenting an attractive target for data theft attempts.
With the average cost of a company data breach standing at $3.5 million
(according to research by The Ponemon Institute), companies can ill afford
to ignore the dangers of inadequate email security.
With this in mind, email security has become a primary concern for
organizations worldwide. Interestingly, email security solutions have not
evolved a great deal in the last few years. They all seem to offer the
same anti-spam functionality.
This makes ancillary features that appear to have little relevance to the
security of email communication vitally important. These ancillary
features simplify email security. When a company does not have to
use multiple vendors offering disparate supplemental solutions, it
reduces its risk and cost when moving to cloud-based email services
like Office 365.
The five features described in this eBook are those which distinguish
future-ready email security products and position them as the obvious
choice for organizations seeking a full service messaging solution for on
premise security needs or integration with cloud based applications
such as Microsoft’s Office 365.
1) Email archiving
Many companies are either living with the limitations of on-premise
email-archiving or maybe using a public cloud archiving solution. Small
businesses as well as enterprises wind up using a third party application
to increase archiving space and improve on the search features built
into commercial email systems. Apart from any potential increase in risk,
using the public cloud for email archiving potentially creates
compliance issues. In any event, it entrusts potentially proprietary
information to a third party.
Archiving: the solution
When integrated with your productivity software suite (Office 365 for
example), an email security solution with its own archiving functionality
solves the problems associated with putting email and attachments
into the care of a third party. Because your archiving facility is integral to
the security solution, you’re unlikely to find a more robust way to
protect your archived files. If your company is under regulatory
obligations to keep data secure, integrating your archiving into a
strongly secured environment is the best possible way to ensure
compliance.
2) Encryption
Organizations all over the world are dealing with highly public security
breaches on top of regulatory pressure and an increase in identity theft.
Sending confidential information over unencrypted email puts
companies at risk of fines, lawsuits and lost revenue — to say nothing
of the bad PR. Conventional email security solutions may be great for
filtering spam, alerting you of phishing emails, and stopping other
threats, but what about the sensitive and business-critical data
contained in outgoing messages? Of course you can choose to use
on-premise, hardware encryption solution, but that’s typically useful
only for intra-company communication, since in most cases, client
software is necessary to enable encryption of outgoing mail and
decryption of messages at the recipient’s end.
Outgoing email protection: the solution
Email data is frequently subject to regulations imposed by PCI and
other agencies. If you use email to transfer information subject to these
standards precaution in the form of encryption is necessary to keep
your data safe.
An email security solution should activate based on pre-set, automatic
policies and be clientless encryption so that any specified recipient can
receive the message. This significantly improves the effectiveness of
inbound-only protection. The best security applications provide policy-
driven encryption that allows administrators to configure encryption
policies to automatically detect the presence of personally identifiable
information such as social security numbers. When such “trigger”
information is detected in the body of an email message, messages are
automatically encrypted reducing the chance of user error. Recipients
only need to register in order to obtain a decryption key, so the need
for specialized software is eliminated.
3) Large file transfers
You have probably been frustrated more than once by the difficulties in
attaching large files to emails that exceed company restrictions on
message size. But you could be forgiven for wondering what that has to
do with security and why an email security provider would get involved
in file transfer solutions.
To see the connection, it’s necessary to descend a little from the 20,000-
foot viewpoint and think about how large-file sharing and collaboration
is typically managed. Many email systems limit the size of attachments,
meaning large files have to be sent via some other channel. Like the
archiving issue, transferring large files puts you in the position of
exposing data files to cloud-based storage — making that data more
vulnerable to potential attacks.
Sharing large files: the solution
Imagine if your company had its own Web portal, allowing files of any
size to be uploaded for retrieval by an authorized recipient — and only
by that recipient. That is exactly what you get when your enterprise
invests in an email security solution with a large file transfer module.
Your files do not clog the traffic in the email system and do not carry
the risks associated with consumer solutions. Large file transfer should
include encryption, customizable expiration dates and access keys for
additional security.
4) Email branding
Making your corporate emails over with branding, such as logos, banner
ads, links to landing pages, and other lead-generating elements is a
great way to deliver marketing messages. After all, informational emails
almost always get opened and read. However, branding your own
emails can be technically complex and expensive, which is why many
organizations entrust their email branding to specialist service providers.
The problem with using a third party to brand your email is that in
providing the service, the vendor gains access to proprietary
information (such as your customers’ email addresses), spawning a
potential security vulnerability.
Email branding: the solution
A new breed of email security application is finally emerging in a market
that has spent some years in the doldrums. The developers of these
on-premise and cloud-based solutions are approaching security from a
non-traditional perspective. Email branding, including easy to use
templates and policies that are centrally managed, are some
functionality that you can expect and keep in-house, enjoying greater
security, along with affordability and a simpler process for branding
corporate emails.
5) Integration
Productivity and communication platforms come with some degree of
built-in security. However the level of protection is really just enough
to guard against basic threats. For advanced threat detection and
prevention, your company needs additional assurances, especially if
you are in an industry where regulatory compliance demands a no-
compromise approach to online security. It is critical, however, that
these services are compatible with Office 365 and similar platforms.
Integrated email security: the solution
To supplement the basic security features of Office 365, organizations
need a third-party partner. An email security solution that integrates
seamlessly with your exchange systems can simplify the monitoring
and protection of inbound and outbound mail. An integrated solution
keeps your IT team in total control of email security, combining
advanced policy-based capabilities with easy-to-use features and
reporting for end-users.
Email security will never be the same again
Protecting your company’s email from spam and phishing attacks is
only one facet of today’s continual battle against sophisticated
cybercrime rings and data leakage.
There are multiple ways business email traffic can generate
vulnerabilities in digital communication security. To ensure these
potential security gaps stay closed you need a multi-faceted solution
that can guard your email effectively and keep you from compliance
issues, data loss or the theft of intellectual property.
An email security solution capable of defense on multiple fronts must
offer centralized management and protection of all email-related
activity, from message contents and attachments, storage and retrieval
of archived messages, and additional functionality like email branding,
through to online collaboration and large-file transfer activities. The
solution which can cover all those requirements is the one that
differentiates itself most clearly from the rest.