That Email You Sent Could Expose Your Company To Hackers
by admin
To most companies, Email Servers are the Achilles Heel of IT security. Email servers are the largest central repository of highly-sensitive critical business data which is directly accessible to any anonymous user in the outside world.
Part of the difficulty in maintaining proper email server security is that you need to let in the same type of people you’re attempting to block out. There is simply no way to effectively maintain a closed-b y-default access policy when it comes to your primary means of external communication.
By pinging your server and attempting to generate false-positives, hackers can gain a wealth of information that could be used to exploit the system later on. For example, it’s common to send a benign virus or blank EXE file to one of the users in order to see how the email server will react. This will often trigger an error message which exposes information such as location, software vendor, software versions, antivirus, and more.
The email headers also contain some great pieces of data – such as the server’s IP address – that can be used to attack the system.
This information can be incredibly valuable when it comes to finding weaknesses and potential exploits.
If a hacker can gain unauthorized access to your internal network – which is often the case with WiFi – they can take advantage of this access to intercept or modify messages in transition.
And if your email server can be exploited, this can be used as an entry point to attack more critical internal systems that reside within more protected zones.
The threat to email servers is much worse today than it used to be just a few years ago, since packages like Microsoft SBS make it relatively easy for unskilled amateurs to set up and manage their own Exchange servers without knowledge or training in the right security precautions.
Running an email server is no joke. A single breach could kill your company overnight.
That’s why – if you can’t afford to have a dedicated on-staff email security professional – you should outsource the management of your email servers. Hosted Exchange services are especially attractive since Microsoft Exchange is the most powerful and robust email suite on the market, and SMBs can take advantage of the enterprise-class features for a small monthly fee.
And when you outsource your email to a hosted Exchange provider, your email servers are being administered and managed by experienced and highly-trained Exchange Security and Network Security experts for a fraction of what it would cost you to bring that talent in-house.
Another major benefit is that your Exchange servers will be completely isolated from other critical IT systems. In the event of an unlikely breach, this would localize and isolate any possible damage.
If you’ve been thinking about setting up your own Exchange servers, but you’ve been worried about security, you should consider outsourcing to an experienced and dedicated secure hosted Exchange specialist.
This Post wss made possible by 123Together.com, the leader in secure hosted Exchange and other cloud solutions.
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