Email Security: Cleansing Closer to the Source

By Luis Curet -- Senior Vice President Americas; M86 Security

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There’s little denying the impact email plays in our daily lives. This valuable tool has helped to revolutionize the way we communicate and do business. Unfortunately, for all of the productivity gains realized as a result of this technology, there are still a number of risks email systems present on a daily basis. A staggering percentage of email — as high as 90 percent according to research — is spam related. Spam, phishing, spyware, malware, and blended threat attacks cost businesses billions of dollars each year as they face an uphill battle combating complex security threats originated from email systems.

As the Internet has evolved, so has the level of sophistication of email attacks on the networks we’ve come to rely so heavily upon. The vast majority of spam is now sent from botnets: armies of infected computers being used for these purposes without the unsuspecting owner’s knowledge. This wide distribution of spam senders has caused the technology used to combat spam to also evolve to ensure it remains on top of its game. Other emerging attacks, such as blended email attacks designed to bypass the malware scanning on email servers to infect users through Web browsing, also lead to the development of new innovative technologies.

So, apart from selecting an email security vendor to minimize the impact of these attacks, what else should you consider? One area that many customers don’t seem to realize is that blocking or deleting as much of this unwanted email before it enters your network should be a best practice. This can be done through making better use of connection management, simply not accepting any email that is not for a valid internal email address for example, or shifting your detection technology to the cloud.

Deploying email and email security in the cloud is now a fast-growing method for addressing the latest cloud-borne email threats. Osterman Research, Inc. estimates that cloud-based messaging services will grow from 12 percent of the email user base today, to 31 percent by 2012. The advantages of cloud-based email security are numerous but the prime benefit is having a ‘clean stream’ of email entering your network and lowering administration.

Typically, cloud solutions have been used to provide this clean stream, and some offer more in-depth policy management controls but they still don’t match the capability offered by the leading on-premises solutions of today. This is one of the reasons why many customers hold back from moving to the cloud.

So what is the solution? Customers have a choice and can either select an advance cloud security service that can offer all the policy coverage and granularity of an on-premises solution, or they can use the best of both worlds, in a hybrid deployment mode. Use the cloud service to provide that clean feed of email and cut your inbound email feed to just 10 percent of what it was, then rely on your on-premises solution for the more granular policy and management tasks, as well as for scanning outbound email for sensitive information and more.

What is nirvana? Well, perhaps it’s a combined solution that uses a single management interface, consolidated reporting and central management, that you as the customer can slide the scale as to how much gets done in the cloud and how much gets done on-premises. This way you make the most of the advantages of both cloud and on-premises, but in a way that makes most sense for you and your organization.

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Luis Curet -- Senior Vice President Americas; M86 Security About Luis Curet — Senior Vice President Americas; M86 Security

Luis Curet brings over 25 years of experience in sales, channels and marketing to his role as senior vice president Americas. In this position Luis is responsible for all customer touch points and drives new business development as the company expands their growing Secure Internet Gateway. Prior to joining M86 Security, he held the position of vice president for Rainbow Technologies, a $125 million IT security solutions firm that was acquired by SafeNet Inc.

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