10 Steps to E-mail Security

Servers don’t send email, people do. That’s why it’s so important that everyone in your organization understands exactly what is acceptable when using email.
In our experience, there’s an inverse correlation between how much time a company spends developing and promoting its email policy and how much money they spend chasing the problems that poorly managed email creates.
A good policy looks like this:
_ Clear – easy to understand, with minimal room for interpretation.
_ Realistic – based on the involvement of all parts of the business to reflect the way you work.
_ Granular – recognizing that different users, departments and locations use email differently (while sharing common ground).
_ Flexible – the ability to change as your business changes.
_ Up-to-date – covering all new threats and reflecting continuous feedback from the business.
_ In-your-face – an effective policy is seen on induction, on bulletin boards, in cafeterias, newsletters, e-updates...
Don’t just tell all staff about the policy, tell them how you’re enforcing it using filtering technology. The deterrent effect alone will prevent breaches before they occur (and give you a stronger case if prosecution is necessary).
We feel so strongly about policy, we’ve decided to share our own. To see Clearswift’s email policy, contact info@clearswift.com.
Clearswift’s email security solutions are all policy-driven. The entire MIMEsweeper range is designed so that you can support your policy with our technology. You set the rules, let MIMEsweeper police them.
Be clear about what you’re defending against.
If your email security strategy doesn’t cover every one of these threats, you’re inviting attack:
_ Viruses, trojans and bots
_ Spam and phishing attacks
_ Spyware
_ Denial of Service Attacks
_ Confidential data leaks
_ Hatemail and pornography
_ Illegal material and stolen files
_ Regulatory breaches
A security solution that leaves any of these undefended is no solution at all. When your CEO calls you into his office and slams a newspaper on the desk with the headline, CHILD PORN RING OPERATES FROM Xco OFFICES, your great spam detection rates are not going to be of much help.
MIMEsweeper products cover every email threat, letting your policy dictate the response to each. And as new threats emerge, MIMEsweeper integrates them quickly and easily. No loopholes.
Make sure your defenses are sustainable.
An email security strategy that over-burdens the IT department and email administrators will ultimately fail – not to mention wasting talent that can be better employed elsewhere. A sustainable approach is:
_ Technology-enabled – supported by robust traffic filtering and analysis tools.
_ Integrated – handling all threats in one solution from a single management console.
_ Web-managed – giving authorized administrators access from any browser anywhere.
_ Shared sensibly – with users managing their own quarantine lists and authorized departments helping with relevant policy breaches.
_ Automatically updated – minimizing manual patches and updates to profiles, software and operating systems.
_ Easy to deploy, monitor & manage – with comprehensive reporting to keep things on track.
Take a look at your current defenses. If any of the above are not true, you’re probably making life difficult and compromising security. MIMEsweeper technology integrates best-of-breed defenses into a single, web-managed platform with centralized policies, roles-based management and auto-updates. No solution is easier to own. Make sure all traffic is protected. It’s no good deploying great security for inbound emails if the outbound and internal traffic is unsecured.
_ Outbound traffic can carry viruses or confidential data.
_ Internal messages can carry hatemail, abuse or illegal files.
_ Webmail – can include any or all threats founding normal email.
Are you as rigorous about your outbound, internal and webmail traffic as you are about inbound? MIMEsweeper covers all traffic in all directions, inbound, outbound and internal. And webmail is covered as part of the MIMEsweeper web solutions.