One of the most important practices to engage in for security is proper email management. IT services providers in Atlanta remind time and again that employees need to be trained on what to open and what not to open as most viruses come through email. They need to be wary of false email addresses. Oftentimes, a malicious message will cloak itself in familiarity.
For example, the email address of a middle-manager sending information to those beneath him may be Jim.Michaels@YourBusiness.com. Now imagine the second in command of Jim got an email from Jim.Mihaels@YourBusiness.com. Did you catch the difference? Only one letter has changed in the false email address.
The eye scans quickly over the information and expects that it is accurate. Well, this is exactly the kind of thing that can usher in ransomware, compromising your entire network. The price? Likely a bitcoin or two. A bitcoin is nearly $7k, and if that’s all they want, you got off easy. Here’s the thing: if you’ve got an internally-based email server, what will, ultimately, happen is your server will be infected with the malware.
Encryptions
IT services providers in Atlanta can sometimes help you get out from under the thumb of a ransomed network but don’t expect this to happen easily. In fact, you probably shouldn’t factor such a scenario at all. What’s more likely is that the ransomware will be encrypted with a military-grade code that is next to impossible to crack.
The best way out of such a situation is to have a BDR (Backup and Data Recovery) solution in place, which “mirrors” your email server in the cloud. This allows you to initialize the infected server and then reload all your old information onto it. However, there is a lot of complication there and the fact is you’re more likely to see security compromise with an internal solution, anyway. Plus, it’s quite complicated. Configuring considerations will include:
- Mail transfer agent
- Mail delivery agent
- POP 3 server, IMAP server
- Antivirus protections
- Spam filters
- Webmail
Perhaps, your internal solutions are well-able to handle those things and if things “go down”, you’ve got secure backup contingency plans. This will restore operations quick enough that you’ve budgeted out an exterior mail server.
Then, it’s the day before Thanksgiving. All your tech people are scattered across the country and somebody accesses the server from accounting, at the last minute, fails to scan an email address (because he or she’s late for her flight), and downloads some ransomware into the system.
Now, even if you’ve got automatic notifications, your leading tech staff is halfway across the country. There’s only so much he can do. This is, especially, hair-raising when you consider that Black Friday and Cyber Monday quickly follow Thanksgiving, and these are traditionally big days for businesses. You could miss out on some of the most integral selling days of the year! Meanwhile, using an outsourced email server allows for a cloud-mirrored solution that keeps you secure continually, even during the holidays.
Securing External Email
IT services in Atlanta through MIS Solutions, Inc can cost-effectively secure your email needs (and often efficiently) than internal solutions. Contact us for sustainable external email.