Why Does Your Business Need Effective Email Security?

Inadequate security measures for your business’ email can have devastating long term effects, including:

• • Loss of Privacy: Email is your best means of communicating with your vendors, clients and employees, but if you're questioning the security measures in place, how can you feel comfortable sharing valuable information? Worrying about who will read your email every time you send one is no way to do business.
• • Compromised Data: As soon as you learn that one email has been leaked, there’s no way of knowing how many more already have, or will be. The sensitive data that you and your employees divulge in emails and attachments on a daily basis is only as safe as your email security measures.
• • Untrustworthy Reputation: Clients rarely continue to work with businesses after they've been hacked. Would you expect your current business partners to continue to communicate with you via email if they were unsure of its safety? Protection for your email further protects your company’s name and reputation in the business community.

Archival

Without a doubt, email is one of the most ubiquitous parts of daily office work in businesses today. It is often the first and best choice of contact, allowing for clear expression of information, with recent advances in the medium granting more and more features to users that offer further functionality. One valuable feature that is quickly becoming an industry standard is email archiving. By backing up copies of your digital correspondence through the Cloud to remote and digital servers, you can enjoy many benefits, including:

• • Legal and Regulatory: Industry requirements and standards tend to mandate that any business have a clear and accessible record of all communications. In the event of any legal concerns, it's good to know that a complete record of any correspondence undertaken on the company's behalf is available to you at a moment's notice.
• • Accurate and Convenient Reference: Aside from a legal context, for your own purposes a complete backup of your company's emails can be very valuable. By retaining an infallible record of how your business operates over email, you can ensure that not a single memorable action taken in the name of your company is forgotten.
• • Opportunities for Improvement: An increasingly common service for businesses these days is data mining, in which a business has the entirety of its data analyzed for patterns and other noteworthy trends. The information gained from this process can be highly beneficial, allowing a company to eliminate areas of redundancy and capitalize on unrecognized strengths. By archiving your business' emails, you can offer that much more data for a mining service to comb through, which only improves the results of the process.

What Solutions Are Available For Email Archival?

There are a range of available email security solutions available to businesses that offer both advantages and disadvantages depending on their nature. It's important to consider your needs as a business before selecting one or the other, and as always, a reliable partner in IT like Hammett Technologies can help make the selection process simple and effective.

Software Solutions

Software hosted on your business’ email servers, or to a locally connected server, can presents a range of features, including:

• • Peace of mind knowing that your confidential info is being dealt with onsite, rather than through a third-party located off premises
• • Relatively low initial costs for on boarding, given that the software is the expenditure. However, ongoing costs can mount up, as software requires regular maintenance and monitoring by a trained IT staff.
• • Potential dangers, as incoming spam and viruses are downloaded to your server prior to being dealt with, which can slow the archiving process and result in unnecessary overhead storage.
• • This solution constitutes a single point of failure, with the archived data being stored in the same location as the primary mail server, leaving it without a secondary failsafe in the event of an onsite disaster. The software does not offer a continuity option, which is vital in light of the single point vulnerability.

Appliance Solutions

An appliance email archival solution is made up of pre-built hardware running specialized software in order to filter and archive incoming email. Appliance-based email archival presents the following advantages and disadvantages:

• • More convenience in deployment, as the appliance is not directly tied to any email server, meaning it can be deployed at a variety of sites.
• • Hardware does present a far great expenditure, both in capital to purchase the appliance, plus the cost of replacing it every few years.
• • Similar to the software solution, appliances also constitute a single point of failure in the event of an onsite emergency.
• • The hardware portion of the appliance will have limited capacity, and as such will not be able to grow with your business past a certain point, and will eventually require a solution that can accommodate your business’ size.
• • Not all appliance solutions will even offer archival or continuity capability, with some limited to filtering only. Furthermore, they will be susceptible to any network issues encountered by mail server itself.

Cloud-Based Solutions

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions based in the Cloud mitigate nearly every issue encountered by software and appliance solutions. Instead of filtering and archiving locally, all the work is done in the Cloud before any messages reach your business’ server, after which only the vetted emails will be sent to your business. It’s simple to deploy and maintain, and presents a fraction of the costs associated with other solutions. Benefits of Cloud-based email archival include:

• • Ideal Cloud solutions feature multiple points of redundancy so that your archived emails remain accessible whenever you need them.
• • Continuity is handled by redirecting any users to the Cloud-based service in the event of a disaster, so they can continue to send and receive email without interruption.
• • In addition to filtering your incoming mail, the Cloud will even check your outgoing mail for undetected spam and viruses, helping you to maintain an admirable reputation with clients, and avoid being blacklisted.
• • The Cloud is easily scaled to your business as need be, regardless of whether you’re growing every year or tightening into a smaller, more efficient operation.
• • The Cloud is inexpensive and simple to install, with no hardware or software needed. A reliable partner in email archival such as Hammett Technologies can ensure your deployment process is as stress-free as possible.

Why Should Your Business Choose Cloud-based Email Security and Archival?

Simply put, The Cloud is the answer to each and every email IT issue. It provides email security, email continuity and email archival, all for a low price, and with a simple installation process. When compared with the risks associated with traditional software and appliance solutions, the choice is clear.

Upgrade your business' email with the Cloud today. Contact Hammett Technologies at (443) 216-9999 or info@hammett-tech.com to start your stress-free and low cost migration process.