So you’ve decided that hosted email security is the right thing for your company. Excellent, you’re well on your way to providing vastly improved services to your users while saving money at the same time. But now you have to look at all the vendors out there to see which one is the right one for you. And that’s where you are stuck. There are so many out there, it can seem overwhelming to compare them, and you don’t have time for that. So in this article I want to share the most important things you should look out for when choosing your hosted email security service.
1. Anti-everything
Make sure your hosted email security provider provides antivirus scanning for malicious content, anti-spam filtering to keep out all the junk, and anti-phishing tools to protect your users and your company from data loss. Look for additional countermeasure type features like anti-DoS capabilities and the ability to block directory harvesting attacks.
2. Multiple scanning engines
No single antivirus solution will catch everything. Focus on the hosted email security providers who use multiple scanning engines to provide the maximum protection to your users.
3. Inbound and outbound scanning
You don’t want to pass an infection to your customers, nor do you want some overzealous marketing type to land you on a blacklist, so look for hosted email security providers who can scan both your inbound and your outbound mail to provide maximum protections.
4. Individual reporting
You already have enough to do; you don’t need to go through the spam trap each day looking for false positives. Do yourself a favor and use a hosted email security provider that sends individual daily summaries to each user, so they can do their own checks for blocked messages.
5. User self-service
Enhance that “gift to yourself’ by looking for user self-service options, so that if there is a blocked message that should have been let through, users can release it themselves instead of opening a ticket that you have to work on.
6. Email solution agnostic
SMTP is a standard protocol, so why do some vendors -only work with certain email solutions? Even if your chosen application is on the list, stay away from the hosted email solutions that only work with certain products or you may find yourself unable to migrate to a new platform or even upgrade your own without major hassles.
7. Strong logging
Good logging that is easy to query is very important. If the hosted email security provider you are looking at doesnÕt have good logging and search abilities, scratch them off the list.
8. Multiple language support
Even if you are not a global company, chances are you have users who speak multiple languages. Hosted email security solutions that offer multiple language support are easier for your users to work with, and that makes everyone happy.
So there you have it — eight must-haves for hosted email security that should make your choice from the top contenders easy!
This guest post was provided by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. Learn more about the benefits of using hosted email security.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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