The days of riding horseback through the wilderness to deliver a message are over. But make no mistake; we're not out of the woods yet. The digital world exposes us all to a virtual wilderness. Email offers simplicity to both the messenger and the malevolent.
Email has grown in vitality, now becoming the most important communication tool in the corporate world. The perpetuation of emerging threats has transformed email from an asset to a liability. Gone are the days when organizations could manually cope with the occasional email-borne nuisance. Email security has become a necessity and organizations must know the best way to ensure the integrity of their email network.
Perhaps an even greater threat to your organization's effectiveness is an over-investment in an under-effective email security solution. Organizations must seek a comprehensive, future-proof solution on a platform that integrates flawlessly with their current infrastructure.
The email security market is not bound by in-house software or hardware solutions. Organizations can push the war against spam, viruses, and other email borne threats outside of their network using a managed service.
What is a managed service?
Unlike software and appliance solutions, a managed email security solution sits entirely outside of your network. With a quick change of your organization's Mail Exchange (MX) records, mail is routed through the managed service, effectively filtering your email and delivering only genuine messages to your network. Such an infrastructure offers a number of benefits over traditional appliance and software security measures.
Benefits
- Instant Deployment
- Zero Maintenance
- Failover / Redundancy
- Disaster Recovery
- Scalability
- Bandwidth Savings
- Complete Threat Protection
- Future-Proof
- Platform Independent
- Low TCO / Quick ROI
Instant Deployment
Since a managed service introduces no hardware or software into your infrastructures, deployments typically consist of only a simple MX record change. Moreover, managed solutions come pre-configured to maximize effectiveness with minimal user intervention.
Zero Maintenance
Updates to hardware and software are a necessary evil that demands time and money. This is especially true with security technology in order to stay ahead of new threats. But a managed service introduces absolutely no hardware or software into your infrastructure. All updates are performed by the managed service transparently to the end-user.
Failover / Redundancy
Implementing a redundant infrastructure is rarely cost-effective, especially in small to medium businesses. Yet, downtime is never acceptable. Deploying a managed solution is your ticket to enterprise-class reliability, without expending financial resources to integrate a redundant network infrastructure.
Disaster Recovery
Internal network and hardware glitches that compromise the availability of your email are inevitable. During downtime, not only is productivity lost, but also data which can cost your organization countless dollars. With a managed service, your email is queued during downtime. After connectivity is re-established, your email is promptly delivered to you. Organizations which deploy managed email security are able to focus solely on regaining connectivity, without worrying about lost messages during downtime.
Scalability
A managed service allows organizations the flexibility to grow without investing in additional information technology. Organizations with multiple geographic locations must purchase, implement, and maintain a software or hardware solution in each location that has a mail server. However, geographically dispersed organizations can be wholly controlled through a managed service, without any additional investments, installation, or maintenance.
Bandwidth Savings
Quality hardware and software solutions can effectively halt the flow of junk messages into end-users' inboxes. However, these junk messages still reach the perimeter of your network. Bandwidth is required to analyze all messages, and messages that are quarantined must be downloaded and stored. With a managed solution, only genuine messages reach your network. Spam, viruses, fraud, and malicious email messages are stopped before they approach your organization's perimeter.
Complete Threat Protection
There's much more to email security than spam and virus protection. Directory harvesting, mail bombs, phishing, dictionary attacks, and many other threats assault vulnerable organizations each day, causing countless dollars in damage and lost productivity. Most appliances and software solutions are only a piece of the email security puzzle.
More importantly, with a managed service you have professionals maintaining your email's security. Spam, viruses, and other email nuisances are growing more sophisticated, and require more sophisticated technology and know-how to combat them. A managed service supplies organizations with access to comprehensive technology and wisdom.
Future-Proof
Anti-spam technology, like no other, has an uncanny ability to lose effectiveness after a year or two. This is because spam is constantly changing, while your software and hardware is staying the same.
Spam is also growing in volume. A few years ago, you may have been receiving an average of ten spam messages a day. A spam solution with a 90% capture rate would catch all but one. Today, however, many users are receiving tens, even hundreds of junk messages a day. More intelligent software is needed to stop these additional messages, without misclassifying genuine ones.
A managed solution's core competency is to stay ahead of email threats. Thus, organizations are always plugged in to a cutting edge solution.
Platform Independent
Regardless of your organization's preferred OS and Mail Transfer Agent (MTA), a managed service can integrate easily into your infrastructure. Even organizations that utilize several operating systems and MTAs can quickly fit under the umbrella of a managed solution.
Low TCO / Quick ROI
Software and hardware solutions can rope you in with a large, non-refundable, upfront investment, and annual recurring fees. On the other hand, a managed solution is typically subscription-based, which can be cancelled at any time for a pro-rated refund. With a lower upfront outlay and minimal maintenance, organizations can realize a return on their investment in much less time with respect to traditional email security platforms.
Take Control of Your Email Network
Managed email security takes the burden off your budget and overworked IT staff and places it on the spammers. A managed service makes email what it was meant to be - an effective, hassle-free, business communication tool.
Spam Spy, LLC is an innovative provider in managed email security services. For more information on managed email security, visit http://www.spamspy.com (c) 2006 Spam Spy, LLC. All rights reserved.
[tags]anti spam,managed email security,viruses,phishing,spam,email,security,spam blocker[/tags]
