Is Your Email Heading Up to the Cloud?

In an era where even the most routine technology purchases are coming under heavy scrutiny, it’s no surprise that cost saving services like cloud computing are dominating the headlines. The lure of the cloud is two-fold: software acquisition and system administration cost reduction. While some organizations are still hesitant to store sensitive data on the cloud, one area in which many have taken the plunge, is email services. You have the option of outsourcing the entire service, or using the cloud for specific product type applications like inbound anti-virus and anti-spam filtering. Recent estimates suggest that spam accounts for over 90% of all email. And the trend doesn’t seem to be reversing. Managing the required scanning, remediation and updating are resource intensive activities, often warranting dedicated servers and staff. Transferring this activity to the cloud, frees enterprises to focus more on tasks that are critical to their business. But as with all solutions, there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

Pros

Cost Savings – Having your hosting provider do anti-spam service means one less piece of software that you’ll need to purchase, support and administer. Network Traffic – Imagine a network free of millions of pieces of unwanted email. Increased bandwidth means your internal systems can more quickly respond to customer requests. Increased Security – Off-site spam and virus filtering reduces the chance of virus tainted email reaching and infecting enterprise networks. The result? Minimized potential for data loss and downtime.

Cons

Performance – Some users might note a performance degradation when using cloud based solutions do to any internet connection slowdowns. This is a minor annoyance for some, but could be an issue. Software Conflicts – As the anti-spam solution will just solve one area of your network security concerns, most companies will still need to run other software like firewalls that may conflict with the cloud service.

Conclusion

Even considering the challenges, for many organizations, outsourcing email anti-spam services warrants further investigation. However, enterprise level change should of course be undertaken with caution. Solid research, testing and trials go a long way toward ensuring a successful implementation. There are hosted email security solutions like GFI MAX MailProtection that gives you a free 30-day trial so you can try the product completely risk free. Setting up is a breeze and with very low running costs.