E-mail is arguably the most sensitive information application in a company's software suite. With e-mail downtime, corporate data loss, and financial threats being major concerns for any business, strong e-mail security is a must. For companies where employees cannot send communications through e-mail, business relationships with partners, customers, and other constituents can grind to a halt, resulting in executive panic. However, with differences in culture, markets, operations, and business models, companies all have varying IT requirements that continue to fuel the need for choices in the e-mail security space.
[ See which e-mail security service wins in InfoWorld's comparisons: "Test Center: E-mail security services square off" and "Test Center guide: Mail security appliances." | Learn more about fighting spam with Exchange 2007. ]
To protect against e-mail-borne threats, IT professionals can approach security from three angles: 1) by deploying on-premise software, 2) by deploying an on-premise security appliance, or 3) by contracting with a hosted e-mail security provider. Each approach has pros and cons, and the decision as to which to use depends on your specific corporate requirements. But here are the top 10 areas* to consider when researching e-mail security for your organization:
*List is restructured version from a Mailprotector security presentation.
Of the three approaches to address e-mail security, software is arguably the most popular.
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244 Recommendations
We have used the hosted email security methond for 2 years now (Postini now part of Google) and have had great success. It kept the unwanted traffic off our network, was easy and quick to implement. It is well worth the money to have the problems and maintenance issues related to a software system removed from our staff. We were spending up to a day a week with our old system. Hosted was the way to go for us!