You are convinced: you need additional protection for your company emails. However, it is difficult to choose from the of solutions available. Between the anti-spam solutions integrated directly into the email service and additional security services software, your mind is on the fence. However, in a home, you would not hesitate to combine an armoured door, intrusion detectors and surveillance cameras.
In our view, five features are essential. They must be offered by your future supplier. Here they are.
Feature #1 – Filtering of incoming emails
Of course, your future email security software must offer you efficient filtering of incoming emails. This can be done in several ways:
- Reputation-based email filtering: filtering of identified spammers, querying of international reputation databases…
- Allowlist: selection of senders whose emails the company accepts.
- Blocklist: list of senders whose emails the company rejects.
- Content analysis: blocking of a message based on its content (analysis of words, links, images, attachments, etc.).
For even more agility and adaptability, choose a solution that allows you to modify, adapt, delete or add filters easily, in a few clicks and according to the needs of your end users.
Feature #2 – Antispam and antivirus
It is essential to select a security solution with effective anti-spam and antivirus capabilities. Indeed, many unwanted emails manage to get past the native anti-spam built into email solutions and end up in your users’ inboxes.
Choose a solution based on powerful technologies, which queries international RBL databases, but also updates its own spam databases with spam fight teams and runs emails through different antivirus programs for better filtering of cyber threats.
To rigorously define whether the email received is spam, the software must have the following minimum steps
- Querying blocklists such as the RBL (Realtime Blocklists) or DNSBL (Blocklists for DNS) enables real-time filtering of senders who have managed to usurp domains or IP addresses
- The analysis of the email elements, such as links, subject, attachments, and images, using criteria set by human algorithms and artificial intelligence, will make sure that the filters work.
- SPF verification (Sender Policy Framework) as well as DKIM and DMARC allow verifying that senders are authorized to send emails on the domain like an exhibitor badge on a trade show.
Feature #3 – Reputation protection
To ensure that your e-mails, especially commercial e-mails, are not mistaken as spam, it is important that your domain name has an excellent reputation. To ensure this, it is essential to employ email security software equipped with an outgoing email traffic filtering system. This measure will effectively prevent the transmission of emails in situations where a user account has been compromised or misused for malicious purposes.
Furthermore, it is recommended to ensure that your software is capable of implementing DKIM, along with SPF verification. By combining these protocols, you can establish the authenticity of the sender, thereby detecting any attempts by hackers to forge your identity (spoofing). This measure not only enhances the effectiveness of spam filters but also safeguards your email domain against phishing attacks, thereby protecting your communication partners.
Feature #4 – The BCP (Business Continuity Plan)
The inability to access an email inbox can have disastrous consequences for business. However, this is what can happen in the event of a system failure or unavailability of an IT infrastructure.
This is why we advise you to choose an email solution with a Business Continuity Plan (or BCP). In this way, your users can continue to use their mailboxes via a backup webmail system, in complete transparency, and will not be impacted by the unavailability due to maintenance or an attack coming from elsewhere than the mailbox…
In addition, as soon as access to the server is restored, the email exchanges made during the outage are re-synchronised with the messaging system so that no information is lost. A real bonus.
Feature #5 – Integration with existing environment
Beyond the functionalities, the ease of deployment can make the difference. Choose a email security solution that adapts to your work environment: email provider, hosting, customisation needs of rules according to users, autonomy of use of the solution, availability of APIs, etc.
This is essential to strengthen the protection of your messaging and to keep an independent administration. Whether on-premise or in the cloud, on-site or outsourced, your future solution must adapt to your requirements, not the other way around.
Of course, this list of “must have” features is not exhaustive. However, in our opinion, these are the essential criteria to consider when choosing a security solution for your business email. If you would like to know more about this, please contact us.
