Of all the business functions that can be sent to the cloud, email security can be one of the most beneficial. With most businesses experiencing varying degrees of email overload—and each individual employee receiving an average of 94.5 non-essential emails every day—it only makes sense to try to streamline email management. But is your hosted email security solution actually getting the job done?
Many of today’s cloud-based email security providers take an approach that cuts several important corners. To make sure your organization is not only well-protected but is also reaping the benefits of a hosted solution, consider these four essential features:
1. High Availability and Redundancy
Your IT team should rest easy knowing that your email security vendor’s servers will provide maximum uptime and availability. It’s important that the solution uses mail processing servers that run in an N+1 configuration. In addition, the vendor’s data center should have multiple industry-standard redundancy plans in place, such as N+1 power redundancy, backup generators, a VESDA fire suppression system and redundant, burstable internet connectivity from multiple tier-1 carriers. These steps ensure that your organization will always have a fully available server, even if a hardware failure occurs.
2. Individual Database Instances
Many hosted email security providers “co-mingle” the data of different customers in order to save bandwidth on their end. However, this can present a security problem if one of the vendor’s other customers is involved in a data breach. It’s important for your cloud-based email security solution to provide single database instances for each hosted customer; that way, your email data is siloed and much more secure.
3. A Dedicated Public IP Address
Similar to the co-mingling of customer data, most hosted email security companies establish shared IP addresses for their various corporate clients. This practice helps to save the vendor money, but it also opens your organization up to potential security vulnerabilities. Shared IP addresses broaden the potential impact of phishing and spear phishing schemes; after all, if another customer is compromised, the reputation of your shared IP address could suffer and it may reflect poorly on your own organization.
4. Reduced Bandwidth Costs
One of the top benefits of a hosted solution is reduced costs. But many traditional email security filters will continue to strain your business’ bandwidth budget by overloading your local network with invalid emails—including false negatives and spam messages that have been diverted from employee inboxes. When you consider the fact that 15 to 20 percent of all incoming emails are spam and about two-thirds are bulk mail, those messages can eat up a lot of bandwidth—and waste quite a bit of money—all on their own. Your company can greatly reduce bandwidth costs by opting for a cloud-based security solution that will only forward valid emails into your local network. Seek an email security solution that uses IP address reputation checks, rather than content filtering, and diverts all invalid emails away from your local network altogether.
If your email vendor isn’t providing these essential benefits, it’s time for your organization to enjoy a higher level of cloud-based email security. Request a demo of Sendio Hosted Email Security today.