As every IT manager and employee knows, securing an enterprise’s technology mix is an ongoing firefight. Many companies have employed a unique blend of applications, appliances, hosted solutions, and devices, but how do you know if you have the features and functionalities that will give you the highest level of email security?
Often, email is often one of the most porous parts of an enterprise system, one in which hackers can get in through social engineering or messages embedded with malicious code. Making sure you have the best possible email security solution isn’t just part of best practices, it’s a crucial way to keep the enterprise in operation.
Here are the features to consider when determining if you have the best email security solution for your company:
Trusted Communities
These are simple but powerful tools that enterprises can use to manage email, and they provide a vastly more secure email environment. Most email protection solutions focus predominantly on the bad actors within the system, which tends to block the good aspects as well.
This isn’t the same as whitelisting, which helps your email security system identify what emails you receive and blocks others. While whitelisting can be helpful, it tends to be deployed by some security vendors as a catchall solution instead of only one small part of a larger email security strategy. By contrast, trusted communities offers a layered, sophisticated approach to securing your environment.
Pattern Matching
Reducing spam is always an important part of email security strategies, but stopping there is like locking only one window in your house when you leave on vacation. What about all the other entry points a thief could use? That’s why pattern matching is important — this technique helps to identify changing patterns of behavior that can make your email security much more effective.
Pattern matching gives you a higher level of confidence about messages coming through than a spam content filter, which tends to use low-level techniques like identifying attachments, images, or keywords.
Automation
Another sign that you have the best email solution is the presence of an automated technique for stopping spam-based computer programs. For example, silverlisting employs an effective SMTP defense to target common spammer automation behaviors. This offers a protective layer for inbound email, giving you a higher level of control when it comes to controlling spam and security risks.
Silverlisting works efficiently in the background and operates in a way that provides very broad, real-time security coverage. With silverlisting, IP addresses for all email senders are tracked. When an IP address first sends email to a customer, the message is deferred automatically in the SMTP transaction. If the message is accepted through several security layers, the IP address won’t undergo silverlisting deferral for another month.
In general, determining whether you have the best email security for your enterprise can be challenging, especially when so many factors might be involved. But by making sure the right functionality is in place, it will go a long way toward keeping your enterprise protected.
When considering additional ways to handle email security, learn how Sendio can reduce threats, and improve the email experience throughout your organization.