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Cloud Services

Jun 09
0

Implement Security Before a Breach

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security breachE-mail is a cornerstone of business communications, and obtaining your customer’s email address is a privilege that allows you to personalize your marketing efforts and learn details about your target market and gain insight that might otherwise be difficult to obtain. How do you assure your customers that their email address (and all the other information they share with you) is secure?

Right now, Sony is busy doing damage control over the security breach that occurred on the PlayStation 3 that let user information, including credit card numbers, escape their grasp. Last month, many financial institutions and retail stores were scrambling to reassure customers and apologize for a breach that occurred when their email company, Epsilon, was compromised and hundreds of thousands of names and email addresses were stolen. While only names and email addresses were accessed and not credit card information, there was a lot of placating to do to reassure uneasy customers. The month before that, Play.com admitted that their email provider had experienced months of irregular activity before revealing that their customers email addresses had been accessed and compromised.

As a business, ensuring the security of your internal email as well as the information you maintain about your customers has to be a primary concern – something you think about doing before there’s a risk for a breach. The question is, can you really create an environment that provides you with the security you need to offer the reassurance your customers and your investors want? It’s a matter of choosing the right hosted e-mail service that provides you the best possible security.

Here at thinkCSC, we have biometric security in place that ensures that only certain people can access the data center and firewalls. We run regular backups, but our backups are completely encrypted, so even the information stored on our back up server is safe from harm. Even if someone were to break in and physically steal our servers, the thieves would not have access to anything because all of the information on it is encrypted. We’ve literally locked out the hackers from the get-go.

We can actually run a piece of software from your location that encrypts your data before it is sent over the internet. When it gets to our site, even we can’t access it unless we have that encryption password. Most of the time, we are taking care of your whole network environment, so we will be the ones managing that password, and we have layers of security protocols in place that keep you protected. But we can also provide you with complete control, and can set it up so you’re the only who has the password.

The choice is simple: you’re either aggressively protecting your customer’s information by having the best email security available, or you’re preparing a letter to your customers to apologize to them after their information was stolen.

May 11
0

The Benefits of Using a Hosted Exchange Server

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Have you ever been away from your office and urgently needed information that was only available on the server at work? What do you do? You either muddle your way through, without the information you need or make the long commute back to the office. Neither choice is completely satisfactory. There is a way you can have access to the information you need, without compromising security, that will allow you to make changes that update regardless of where you access your email: a hosted exchange server.

There are a number of reasons why businesses should consider using a hosted exchange server. One of the primary reasons is security. Free services like Gmail and Yahoo, who offer some centralized data capability, but do not offer the extensive security and privacy of a hosted exchange server. In addition, a hosted exchange server offers  the ability to efficiently share information with colleagues, including the ability to share contacts, calendars, and resources.  You can view someone else’s calendar and they can view yours if they have the proper permissions. Everything is maintained in one central location.

Another advantage of using an exchange server is the ability to access your email from anywhere. Because it is web-based, the same data set is available on your local computer, your terminal server, or even your mobile device – a mobile phone or tablet. It’s a single data set, whether your accessing sent files, contact lists, or your inbox, so whenever you make a change, the change is reflected wherever you access the email next.

That flexibility to access and change information from anywhere and have the changes reflect across every access point, ensuring everyone who shares the information has the most current data  possible, is the brilliance behind using a hosted exchange server.

With a typical email account, using a POP server, once you’ve downloaded the email off the server and onto your computer, that is the only location it is available. If you later need to access the email from your mobile device or another computer, it will not be there. With exchange email hosting, you have access to all of the data inside the exchange. Combined with the advantage of being able to access colleagues’ calendars and contacts makes it a powerful tool.

What does all this mean for businesses and busy executives? With a hosted exchange server, it means corporations can promote themselves as supporting flexible working conditions, without having to worry that they are sacrificing security or productivity. It means the c-level executive who spends more time in an airplane than an office won’t be out of touch with up-to-date information. It means coming back from vacation and getting a day of cleaning out your inbox, while staying in your pajamas and drinking coffee on your front porch. It empowers busy executives to have everything – including any historical data – they need to do their jobs at their fingertips, whether on they are in a meeting, at home, or in Barbados.