Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Why Consider Hosted Email Security?

Hosted-Email-Security When it comes to email security an organization has the option of going for two different approaches. It can either go for an off-the-shelf solution, which it implements on its own infrastructure, or it can decide to employ a cloud based solution. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages, however in this article we will focus on the advantages a hosted email security solution provides in terms of security.

The first clear advantage of a hosted email security system is that your business will not require security expertise to protect your mail infrastructure. When buying an email security product to deploy on your server, you need to ensure that it is then installed in a secure manner and configured correctly for it to be fully effective. Although most modern products are easy to configure, you will still need an administrator that has a good grasp of the security concepts involved to ensure that no combination of events will lead to a security break down. Systems administrators trained in security can be hard to find and cost the company a good amount of money. Hosted email security solutions offload this burden leaving you with a peace of mind knowing that the email security infrastructure is well deployed and properly configured by professionals who have the necessary skills and work for a reputable hosted email security service.

When using a hosted email security service, any malware sent by email to your organization will be filtered at your service provider – this means that practically no malware will ever reach your organization. This has some clear advantages over having no email security at all because in such a case the malware will find itself in your users’ mailboxes; which is a high risk for the organization because someone might run the malware and infect the entire network. As for running your own mail security, there are also some small advantages here. In the event of a mis-configured solution, or even a solution lacking some features which requires additional modules to be purchased, there might be a small risk of malware getting through your organization’s defenses and even if your security solution would block and quarantine such malware, the administrator may execute the file by mistake while investigating the malware – human error that could prove cost. The risk is quite low but still it is a risk which a hosted email security solution would eliminate or, at the very least, reduce further.

Most hosted email security solutions operate as a gateway between the internet and your infrastructure in terms of email service. This means that one will still need to run his/her own mail server infrastructure. That being said however, when using a hosted email security solution, one can configure the firewall or the mail server itself to only allow connections from your service provider. This will protect your infrastructure from attacks by malicious hackers or spammers looking for servers to exploit for their spam distribution. Your server will be protected against these individuals because they will not have any access to your mail server, whereas if you were running your own infrastructure you would not be able to restrict access to any specific IP.

Email security, like other systems, needs to be kept up-to-date to be fully effective. You would need to run regular patching and upgrading to new versions as they are released by the vendor. This is not always feasible as it can be both expensive to buy the latest versions or to pay for maintenance agreements and because of resistance to change from the administrators and management. Both parties can resist upgrades for the same reasons; mainly a fear that upgrading can cause issues with a perfectly working system that could lead to downtime and financial or reputation losses.

There are various techniques email security systems use to protect your email. Some of these depend on training the system on contemporary spam and malware. Hosted email security solutions have a distinct advantage in this area in that they can get access to a wider variety of malware samples and spam to keep their systems up to date in terms of training than any other single organization ever can.

Although in this article we have gone through the different advantages a hosted solution would offer in terms of email security, there is no single solution that fits everyone’s needs. It is entirely up to you to decide what email security model you want to employ, depending on your budget and business requirements.

This guest post was provided by Emmanuel Carabott 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. More information on GFI hosted email security.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Saturday, May 14, 2011

India Based Cloud Computing Companies to Watch in 2011/12

After approximately two years of publishing a static list of India Based Cloud Computing Service Providers, readers have been requesting an updated list, and I felt the cloud ecosystem in India has experienced enough changes to justify revamping my earlier one. Following is the new, improved list.

Editorial Note:

  • Errors and Omissions excepted (E&OE). Contact via twitter @SinghBasant or through Techno-Pulse contact page
  • A few cloud companies featured in the earlier list have been removed due to lack of information or activity during the past two years.
  • Despite having been covered by Forbes India (print edition), the official websites of both ABS, Bangalore (abs.in) and Nu Street Technologies, Chennai (nustreet.com) don’t contain enough useful information about their services for me to include them on the list. So, I’ve not included them.
  • Similarly, Hyderbad based Trillion IT Solutions had a good response during CloudCamp India tour 2011, but I am unable to find sufficient information about their Cloud Services on their official website (yet to launch it seems).
  • There are also a few companies which many of us associate with India due to their significant presence here (including having multiple development centers, etc) and also, perhaps more importantly, the presence of a significant number of Indians in leadership positions (including founder and CEO). A few examples include Zoho, Kaavo, Navatar, Impetus, CSS Corp. These companies are not included on the list because, despite all appearances, they are headquartered in the USA.

List of India Based Cloud Computing Companies – Techno-Pulse Top 12

Order – Alphabetical

ind-10 

Company

Service

Location

Remarks

AppPoint

  • AppsOnAzure - PaaS

Bangalore

Cloud based application infrastructure using Microsoft Azure as the platform. I am yet to explore the details.

Clogeny

  • Cloud Enabler

Pune

Cloud related services such as:

  • Migration
  • Deployment
  • Planning
  • Consulting

CtrlS

  • CtrlS Cloud - IaaS

Hyderabad

On-Demand Private Cloud.

  • 99.995% uptime
  • Tier 4 datacenter

EazeWork

  • EazeHR - SaaS
  • EazePayroll - SaaS
  • EazeSales - SaaS

Noida

Cloud SaaS for SMEs/SMBs.

NetMagic Solutions

  • Cloud 2.0
  • CloudNet
  • CloudServe
  • PrivateCloud

Mumbai

A front runner in the Indian IaaS space.

OrangeScape

  • OrangeScape Studio - PaaS

Chennai

USP - Visual PaaS.

Ozonetel Systems
  • KooKooPaaS
  • CTS - SaaS
Hyderabad In India it has definitely a first-mover advantage in cloud telephony services (CTS)

PK4 Software

  • Impel CRM - SaaS

Bangalore

USP – a non-western CRM for India.

Ramco

  • Ramco OnDemand - SaaS

Chennai

An early mover in SaaS. An ERP on the cloud.

Remindo

  • Remindo - SaaS

Mumbai

Your company branded official social media tool in cloud (Still in Beta, free – up to 20 users)

Synage

  • DeskAway - SaaS

Mumbai

Cloud based project management.

Tata Communications

  • InstaCompute - IaaS
  • InstaOffice - SaaS

Mumbai

Data Centers located at Hyderabad, Singapore

InstaOffice is powered by GoogleApps

TCS

  • iON - ITaaS

Mumbai

Covers the entire spectrum of business processes for SMBs. Domains:

  • Manufacturing
  • Welness
  • Retail
  • Education

Wolf Frameworks

  • Wolf PaaS

Bangalore

Cloud PaaS with 99.97% SLA.

Related Article

Top 10 Cloud Computing Service Providers of 2009