Email is one thing your business can’t do without and with increasing dependence on Email comes the proportionately increased risk of email security. One lapse within your email security and your entire business information flow lies bare, open and vulnerable to attack. With so many options in the market for the right email security solution, just trying to choose and find the best email security solution could be a full-time job by itself. Here are some ways to choose the best email security solutions for your business:
Reputation & bouquet solutions
It would be nothing short of nightmarish to pin different vendors for various aspects of IT network security. One vendor each for Network monitoring, Network management, IT security, Email security, Data back-up and recovery, etc., could all prove to be too much for you to handle separately. Look for a vendor who can assess your needs and offer bouquet solutions covering all aspects within the IT security domain. One or a couple of vendors with an outstanding reputation should be your best call; the one you can finally consider.
Big Vs Small – What’s best for your business?
When it comes to choosing the right vendor, viability becomes an important issue that you must consider. While the small vendors can provide attractive terms and flexibility in pricing, enthusiastic support bordering on paranoia( which you’ll love, incidentally) and great customization options, they might not give you the peace and certainly do not have the kind of resources that large vendors such as Cisco, McAfee and Symantec have.
Vendors: Where have they gone when you need them?
Look for vendors who have service-level agreements (SLA) that can assure you complete support, availability 24/7 on all days of the year, etc. Downtime in an IT network is a pure cash-bleed scenario and you’d want as little of that as possible. What’s the vendors’ SLA on data centres going down? Does the vendor have a plan B (Plan C,D and E is even better). Check for the vendors’ customer testimonials, ask around a little, research as much as you can – this is where you’d know which vendor outlasts most others.
Management control and Interface
When you take to the cloud, the issue of control and management interface becomes a critical aspect to consider. Web security gateways would have the vendor doing much of the heavy-lifting but more often than not, you would still need the ability to control, intervene, control policy, manage user access, and much more. Your vendor must be able to give you granular access control, allow you to manage multiple services that the vendors provide, make the system easy to use and finally, allow you to delegate and administrate the security system from one single log-in enabled portal.
Tons of email goes in and out; it does make sense to keep an eye on it, don’t you think? While we are on the topic, you might want to check out our On Demand Net Email Filter (NEF) service