A Hybrid Approach to Email Security

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Organizations are struggling to keep up with the constant threats presented through email communications. A recent IDC survey found that 60 percent of organizations reported spam blocking effectiveness of less than 95 percent. IDC suggests, “It’s clear from these results that organizations need to increase the effectiveness of their messaging security solutions.”* The barrage of illegitimate emails, which according to some experts, has reached as high as 98 percent of all email messages, is putting a dramatic strain on IT infrastructures, and in some cases causing rigid network appliances to bend and then break under the pressure. When these security appliances crash, the individual email users and the corporate network are left exposed to the threats.

Is the answer investing in even more hardware to keep up with the volume of spam? With today’s tight budgets, particularly in the area of IT, the answer is a resounding no. But given the mounting spam problem there is always the question, “When is enough truly enough?”

The answer may be in a new and growing hybrid approach that combines on-premises and in-the-cloud solutions. IDC reports that, “61 percent of companies felt that a hybrid approach to email security is most effective for stopping inbound email threats.”* There are numerous benefits to using an on-premises solution as a primary filter and using a hosted services as a backup or failover in the event that the appliances goes down due to an electrical outage or overwhelming attack. Stopping unwanted emails in the cloud also provides numerous benefits, including reducing the amount of content processes by the appliance, blocking potential threats before they hit the gateway and helping to prolong the lifespan of existing network appliances.

As with spam filters, not all hybrid messaging security systems are alike however. Today, many hybrid deployments are a combination of standalone systems from different vendors that provide zero interoperability. Administrators are left with a management juggernaut involving different policies, interfaces and methodologies. The thought of adding another complicated solution into a company’s IT infrastructure is frequently met with disdain. A ‘true hybrid system’ provides consistent management across the entire network, delivering a lower total cost of ownership, reducing administrative and management time and costs, while delivering enhanced flexibility with integrated multiple layers of security.

There are a number of challenges with many of today’s email security systems, which are not meeting the growing needs of customers and the evolving threats of email. As we have learned from recent attacks on popular social media sites, failover and redundancy are no longer nice options; they are business critical. It is why Red Condor offers a single deployment model that seamlessly integrates a hosted service with a network appliance. Moving towards a true hybrid approach to messaging security adds integration on top of the multiple layers of security to reduce risks and deliver consistent administration and performance.

* Burke, Brian, Hybrid Messaging Security: Benefits of a Single-Vendor Approach, April 2009.

About Thomas Steding

Dr. Thomas Steding, president and CEO of Red Condor, has nearly four decades of technology industry experience, serving as CEO of eight high-tech companies and Chairman of several others. He has extensive experience in the security industry, as founding CEO of Pretty Good Privacy, Inc., an Internet encryption company; and CEO of RedCreek Communications, a virtual private network company. Dr. Steding earned a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s of Science in Management (Sloan Fellow) from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.