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| INFORMATION |
| Published : |
Jul 30, 2008 |
| Length : |
9 |
| Type : |
Analyst Report |
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| Overview : |
Security is the most single critical task for any email administrator. Starting with a foundation of anti-spam and anti-virus capabilities, organizations should focus on other capabilities, as well, including policy management and a variety of other tasks designed to protect the network and the company from external and internal threats.
There are a number of ways to deploy messaging security, including appliances, software installed on dedicated servers, hosted or managed services and installation of software directly on the email server itself. While there are proponents and opponents of these approaches, there seems to be relatively strong opposition to the last approach on the part of many email administrators.
Osterman Research shares insights gleaned from a just completed survey that dispel the fears of employing server-based email security solutions. Read this white paper to help you understand the latest Exchange security risks and also learn about reasons why an installed security solution may be the best option for you in countering those challenges. |
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| View All Items By This Company |
| Browse Related Categories : |
Email Security, Microsoft Exchange, Secure Instant Messaging, Security, Security Management |
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IS EXCHANGE “TOUCHY”?
One of the issues that we wanted to explore in this survey was the extent to which Exchange might be considered “temperamental”, and so might cause administrators to feel uneasy about installing any third-party software on the server along with Exchange. We asked a series of questions to determine just how temperamental Exchange might be. Here is what we found:
- Only 25% of Exchange administrators largely or completely agree that Exchange Server is “touchy”.
- Only 25% of Exchange administrators largely or completely agree that Exchange Server runs more slowly than administrators consider to be acceptable.
- Only 15% largely or completely agree that Exchange Server is difficult to manage.
- Only 13% largely or completely agree that Exchange Server suffers “lots” of downtime.
- Fifty-nine percent of Exchange administrators largely or completely agree that Exchange is a great email system, while 72% have no plans to migrate away from Exchange during the next five years.
In short, then, our findings demonstrated that the vast majority of Exchange administrators consider Exchange to be a fairly solid messaging platform that suffers acceptable levels of downtime and is simply not difficult to manage, as shown in the following figure.
STILL THE RELUCTANCE
However, two-thirds of Exchange administrators “don’t like” running third-party software on the same platform as Exchange Server. Further, 60% would rather install appliances or additional servers for security than install software on Exchange Server. This is likely due to perceptions that third-party software running on the same platform as Exchange Server can somehow bring down the server more often than if the third-party software runs on separate hardware. About one-half of survey respondents reported that they have experienced or heard of situations in which a colleague, peer or someone else installed messaging security software on their Exchange Server and experienced adverse results.
CONVINCING DECISION MAKERS
Our research revealed something of a mismatch between perceptions about Exchange Server and attitudes about installing software on the same hardware as Exchange Server: administrators largely believe that Exchange Server is a solid, reliable platform, but they don’t want to install any third-party software on the same hardware anyway. However, our research also found that administrators are open to change based on four questions we asked in the survey:
- If it could be demonstrated to you that installing messaging security software on your Exchange Server would have no adverse impact on system downtime, would you be willing to install this software on your Exchange Server? 65% of decision makers responded Yes.
- If it could be demonstrated to you that installing messaging security software on your Exchange Server would have no adverse impact on message delivery time, would you be willing to install this software on your Exchange Server? 67% of decision makers responded Yes.
- If it could be demonstrated to you that installing messaging security software on your Exchange Server would make server and security management easier and less time-consuming, would you be willing to install this software on your Exchange Server? 76% of decision makers responded Yes.
If it could be demonstrated to you that installing messaging security software on your Exchange Server would make server and security management less expensive than managing separate servers or appliances, would you be willing to install this software on your Exchange Server? 78% of decision makers responded Yes.
The bottom line is that while Exchange administrators are largely reluctant to install any third-party software on the same platform as Exchange Server, the vast majority of them are open to considering the potential for doing so if their concerns can be adequately addressed as shown in the following figure.
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