5 Essential Elements of an Email Security Strategy
Entities seeking to secure their email environments should establish a comprehensive strategy designed to protect both the email infrastructure and its users from the wide variety of mail-related threats. The challenge facing technologists is that they must create a flexible solution that meets the organization’s security and operational needs in an effective and efficient manner while respecting financial constraints.
Well-designed security strategies use a toolset that embraces five important characteristics:
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Technology enablement: While managing user behavior is important, the enterprise must also have a robust set of technical security tools that allow the consistent enforcement of security policy. These tools should support enterprise-grade logging, analysis and reporting functionality that provides security staff with a comprehensive view of the organization’s threat landscape.
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Web management: Application administrators in IT organizations are stretched thin and often manage a wide variety of applications. Any tools adopted by the organization should use web-based management platforms that allow administrators to quickly and easily check on system status, troubleshoot problems and adjust configuration settings.
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Integration: Email security solutions operate among many components of an enterprise security strategy. Effective tools should integrate with security information and event management (SIEM) systems to provide organizations with a unified view of their security status.
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Automatic updates: Tools in the email security suite should offer automatic updating capabilities, allowing administrators to configure the system to remain current on patches and signature updates without manual intervention. This reduces the time that IT managers are required to spend on the system, allowing them to focus on value-added activities.
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Ease of use: An enterprise’s email security technologies should fit seamlessly into the IT architecture, allowing quick, efficient deployment and facilitating smooth ongoing management and monitoring. Organizations using virtualization technology may also need solutions that offer a virtual appliance deployment option to avoid introducing new hardware into the environment.
Enterprises implementing an email security strategy should identify products with these characteristics that also meet their specific email security requirements.
Want to learn more? Check out CDW’s white paper, “Email Security: Defending the Enterprise.”
