Protecting Business Critical Services

Transcription

1 Written by Richard Tubb for GFI MAX Author s Bio Richard Tubb has worked in the IT industry for over 15 years, working at large corporations such as Ernst & Young and the NHS, as well as being the owner of two award winning Managed Service Providers (MSPs) providing outsourced IT solutions to Small and Medium Sized Businesses. A popular speaker at events within the global IT community, Richard s blog Tubblog The Ramblings of an IT Consultant ( has twice been nominated for the Computer Weekly Blog Awards in the IT Consultant category, and he was nominated by his peers for inclusion on both the MSP Mentor 250 and SMB Nation Magazine lists. Richard now works as an Independent Consultant, helping IT companies to feel more in control and grow their businesses. You can find him on Twitter at or him at richard@tubblog.co.uk. 1

2 Overview of White Paper is the single most important service to businesses today. The average user spends an hour and 47 minutes per day using [American Management Association]. With the advent of mobile devices, is no longer tied to the office but is read, responded to and sent everywhere, all the time. As well as constantly checking at work, most people check whilst at home, whilst travelling, and even whilst on holiday. As many as 1/3 rd of people aged now check their when they first wake-up, even before they visit the bathroom [Facebook Survey]. Ask most people which business service they couldn t live without, and they ll answer . The rise of social networking has added to the number of s sent and received, and with large amounts of multimedia content becoming the norm, the size of messages has dramatically increased. From a security perspective, the threat of spam, viruses and malware is here to stay. Companies that aren t protected against these threats run a serious gauntlet of issues, not least of which being the danger of an uncaught virus wreaking havoc on a network. Additionally, if a company's system is compromised and used to send outbound spam or viruses, the organization can find itself blacklisted and unable to send legitimate to partners, suppliers and clients. Government and industry regulations now require many companies to retain their electronic communications in a verifiable manner. And organizations that have been involved in litigation are only too aware of the burden of electronic discovery, and the importance of being able to conclusively demonstrate the content of historical communications. Additionally, due to the importance of , many organizations and people now actively seek to retain their messages indefinitely. With the huge growth in storage capacity on computers and corporate networks, people are less likely to delete that might contain valuable information, and more likely to retain messages for future reference. Together, these factors have led to new challenges for businesses managing . Security threats are ever-present. Users are spending more time searching for information stored within old s. Continuous access to s is required, all the time. Even short outages of services can leave users unproductive, and with no external communication, business opportunities may be lost. As a result, organizations are increasingly looking to protect themselves by making sure is online, archived and fully protected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 2

3 This Whitepaper looks at the challenges of managing for businesses, and the options that are available to organizations looking to deploy solutions to protect their . The author concludes that a Cloud-based Security, Continuity, and Archive solution is the best option currently available. How important is ? One of the earliest services available on the Internet, electronic mail ( ) was originally conceived for sending text based messages between users. Over time, became the killer app of the Internet with the ability for users of any technical ability to easily send messages with any contents and any manner of file attachments. Most users view their client software - most commonly Microsoft Outlook but with many other alternatives also available - not only as a tool for sending and receiving , but also as their trusted source for keeping track of documents, presentations and spreadsheets, and requests for appointments. client software is also frequently used for managing to-do lists and tasks, for keeping information about contacts, and for making notes. For many people, no other software is used as frequently. Outside of general correspondence, messages from customer relationship management (CRM) systems, telephone voic systems, external supply-chain systems, transaction processing, e-commerce and other business critical systems all rely on for notifications. The explosion in popularity of social networking has created yet another reason for communications, since people now receive frequent updates from both friends and business contacts through . In summary, has become the de-facto standard for communication within virtually all organizations and is widely relied on. How much is used? is the single most used application for the business user. In research, 26% of an individual s time was spent checking, reading and sending s [Radicati Group]. That s well over 2 hours a day more time than is spent on the telephone or using social networking combined. 15% of Americans claim to be addicted to [AOL Survey]. Certainly, research shows that 62% of people admit to regularly checking work over the weekend whilst at home, and 50% of people confess to checking whilst on holiday, 78% of this checking being through mobile devices (AOL Survey). 3

4 The number of s sent worldwide is 294 billion messages per day, and some 90 trillion messages per year. The typical business user sends 43 s per day, and receives 130 [Radicati Group]. Disturbingly, 90% of these billions of s sent are spam and viruses [Nucleus Research]. For companies not protecting themselves against these threats, there is a very high chance they ll suffer damage in one way or another. How much storage does require? The average size of an is now 75KB [About.com]. Whilst the majority of messages are still short and text based in nature, many messages contain images and formatting information in addition to mere text. Newsletters and other marketing s typically contain both text and HTML versions of their contents, along with inline images, increasing the size of the average message as they grow in prevalence. People also frequently use to send a wide variety of file types. Even though more efficient and more secure alternative methods are available to transfer files, the convenience of simply attaching files to an message has made the most popular method for sending large documents. With attachments reaching as much as 10 or 20 MB in size, significant capacity is required to both transmit and store the associated messages. These figures relate to legitimate s and do not consider the 90% of s that are spam and viruses, further adding to the amount of processing power and storage capacity required to manage communications. Why is there a need for security? While most individuals consider spam s a nuisance, for businesses it is a much greater concern. With 90% of all s being spam and viruses, research shows that without any protection in place, lost employee productivity from dealing with spam will cost businesses a minimum of 538 per worker per year [Nucleus Research]. There is the added risk that if a virus is received by , and infects an employee s computer, then it may cause loss of data and at least loss of productivity. Further, the virus will try to replicate itself often sending messages to the contents of a user s address book, or by trying to connect to other devices on the network. Frequently a virus or other malware on an infected workstation will be used to send out spam from an organization's network without their being aware of the activity. 4

5 Quite apart from the damage done to an organization s reputation when suppliers, clients and prospective clients receive spam messages from a business in this way, the business itself can end up being blacklisted. This occurs when an server is identified as a source of spam messages (including those generated by a virus-infected PC), with the effect that other servers will subsequently reject legitimate messages from that server and that organization. The process of getting removed from an blacklist is extremely time consuming and difficult; often the reputation of that mail server or domain will be harmed for a long time. Many organizations now deploy spam and virus filtering on their servers. Whilst this has the benefit of reducing the levels of junk mail that end users see in their inboxes, the message is still being sent through the company's network, received by the server, and processed as any other message before it is classified as spam. This may have the effect of slowing down the processing of legitimate , and that spam message is typically also stored on the company's server along with legitimate . If a company is retaining s for legal or regulatory compliance, this can add massive overhead to storage requirements. Why is there a need to archive and backup ? Many countries now place legal or regulatory requirements on . Organizations that are heavily regulated, such as those in the financial or legal industry, must archive all inbound and outbound s. Quite apart from the requirements to archive for legal or regulatory compliance, the majority of users now use as a storage system - deleting few messages, and instead attempting to keep their s for potential future reference. Given the growing quantity of s received each day and the increasing size of an average message, this requirement to retain old s can put a significant strain on storage systems. For many businesses, the storage requirement for backup no longer grows annually, but quarterly. Whilst the cost of storage space has fallen considerably, the continuous need to backup systems, and to monitor and regularly verify the backup procedure, is an on-going load for the IT department. Additionally, there is a significant distinction between backup and archive. A backup provides a point in time snapshot of the data on the customer's mail server. If there is a problem with an organization s mail server, the data may be recovered from the backup. However, if a user wants to retrieve a message that was deleted, or if an organization is trying to locate messages that are no longer part of their message store, a backup will not help. Furthermore, a backup is not verifiable evidence of communications in the event of litigation or other disputes - only an archive solution that provides verifiable evidence of the date and contents of a given message will satisfy those requirements. 5

6 Last but not least, a backup does not facilitate a search for historical messages. Nor do most mail servers include this functionality. Technologies enabling swift searching of large amounts of data are ever improving, but without this technology in place specifically for an system, individuals and organizations are left spending considerable time searching for old s. In cases where the IT department does not offer a comprehensive solution to archiving and backup to their users, the users themselves often make their own arrangements. This might be by way of storing s locally on their computers or laptops, in an uncoordinated fashion completely separate from any centralized system. These methods of backup are unreliable and insecure, with the number of laptops reported stolen or lost growing daily, including many high-profile cases reported in the press. Furthermore, for legal or regulatory compliance, these individual backups scattered throughout an organization create a logistical nightmare. Without a centralized repository for the message storage, it can be extremely difficult to find relevant messages, particularly when a local backup is lost or an employee leaves a company. In short, organizations need both a backup solution that can help to restore data after the failure of a mail server, and an archive solution that provides a verifiable record of communications as well as a centralized and reliable means to access and search historical messages, including those that were subsequently deleted from the mail store. What happens when is unavailable? Modern systems are considered reliable, although 26% of Small and Medium Sized Businesses still suffer almost 30 minutes of unplanned downtime each month, and half of those organizations reported unplanned downtime of 2 hours+ each month. [Osterman Research Group] This is quite apart from planned downtime - where services are unavailable due to necessary upgrades, patches and security fixes. With 26% of a typical worker's day being spent working on , any unplanned downtime can have a significant impact on productivity. Workers suffer with being unable to find the information they require readily; find lack of a significant roadblock to external communication with suppliers and clients; and indicate that they spend as much time catching up on when service is restored as passed during the outage itself. The effect of any outages on an internal IT department can be considerable. Due to the critical nature of systems, staff in the IT department will be compelled to drop what they are doing and work on the emergency at hand. Other work is delayed, and IT staff may spend whole days absorbed by responding to the after-effects of an outage, even after services are restored. 6

7 Where is unavailable for extended periods, the costs are multiplied. It is not uncommon to see a 100% loss in productivity if a department or entire organization is sent home due to unplanned downtime. Such is the reliance upon systems in modern business. Mobile workers are also significantly impacted by even short periods of downtime. With replacing telephone as the primary means of communication, mobile workers can be severely disrupted when is not available. This can particularly affect people who work during short windows of opportunity for communication, such as in between meetings. The impact of downtime on a business s reputation can be significant. The most common worry for businesses during an outage is that the downtime may impact communications with prospects or pending orders. When suppliers or clients receive a bounced message as a result of an outage, it undermines confidence in a business. When a prospective client receives the same bounced response, they often won t re-send the at all. Even if no bounce messages created, a delay in receiving an important can result in lost business. When is unavailable, many workers look to alternative methods of communication. This can include sending faxes, and using personal web-mail systems such as Hotmail and Gmail. Sensitive information sent outside the corporate system via these mediums can be insecure. In October 2009, 21 million people and businesses using the Hotmail service were warned their data was potentially at risk after passwords to the system were acquired illegally. Faxes can very easily be read by unintended recipients, making it a very poor system for sending sensitive information. And comparably few people have ready access to a fax machine. Additional, all messages sent by these methods will bypass the organization s archive and retention policies, creating a compliance issue for companies subject to regulation. Clearly, an outage can have far reaching effects in lost productivity, harmed communications with customers and prospects, potential security ramifications, and in the risk of lost business. Understanding how to protect your business The first step to protecting your organizations services is to answer the following questions. What are outages currently costing your business? The cost of an employee being unproductive during an outage is a soft cost. That is to say, because the business is not actually writing a check for this cost, it is tempting to 7

8 ignore it when calculating costs. As we ve discussed, there is a real and significant cost to a business of employees being unable to access . Do you have a Disaster Recovery plan? Some businesses have a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan that includes how the business will cope if struck by a natural disaster, fire, theft or loss of building. These plans should include IT systems such as and how a company will cope without these services. If you have a Disaster Recovery plan, consider how you would cope as a business without , and incorporate contingency plans into your DR plan. If your business does not have a Disaster Recovery plan, creating a strategy for tackling continuity can be both the first and a significant step towards creating your own DR plan. What are the Regulatory and Legal Requirements Seek more information of the regulatory and legal requirements that are placed upon your business, dependent upon its location and the nature of the business. Often, this will dictate the requirements and scope of any system that you need to implement for retention. Do you need an agile solution? When considering an security and continuity plan, consider future proofing it. If your business were to grow, could your grow with it? Even replacing a single server can be a time consuming migration, causing downtime and loss of services. Would an continuity platform help alleviate any of these migration pains? If your organization were to acquire or merge with another organization, could your system quickly be adapted to this purpose? Can you ensure the organizational knowledge in is retained? 60% of critical information within a company is contained within [Radicati]. Yet many companies do not have the ability to easily search through this knowledge, particularly after employees have left the organization. Additionally, the time an active employee spends searching for information within should be considered. How much more productive would an employee realistically be if they could find the information they wanted from quickly and easily. When determining a Return-on-Investment (ROI) on any system or process that prevents downtime and provides archive solutions, it is prudent to include these costs. 8

9 What is your solution for security, and is it integrated with your solution for continuity and archive? Almost all companies have some form of spam and virus detection. However, such solutions are often hardware or software point solutions that are separate from any solutions for continuity or archive. Using different, non-integrated solutions for spam and virus protection, a backup system for continuity, and an archive solution, can greatly increase the initial investment necessary along with the ongoing management time and costs compared to a single integrated solution. The difference is magnified when considering the learning curve, time and costs for employees of learning to use two or three different systems instead of one. Potential Solutions Given the factors discussed in this document, an management solution for organizations should encompass three different elements: 1) security - to provide robust, comprehensive defense against borne spam, viruses, and other threats 2) continuity - to provide organizations with continued access to their in the event that their own infrastructure is off-line 3) archive - to provide organizations with reliable, secure storage of all of their historical communications, for subsequent search and retrieval The options for meeting these goals can broadly be split into three categories. Software Solutions Typically installed on the same server that is used for services, or on another server that is locally connected to the main server, a software solution can at first glance appear to be the least expensive approach, especially if older server hardware can be repurposed. This solution does suffer from the fact it is hosted inside the company s premises, if not on the mail server itself. This means that spam and virus s will be downloaded to the server before being processed, potentially slowing down the process of legitimate and adding storage overhead. It is also a single point of failure, susceptible to any problems with the server running the anti-spam/antivirus software. FAs an archive solution, a software approach is also less than ideal, as the archived messages will typically be stored in the same datacenter or server closet as the primary mail server - meaning that a fire, earthquake, flood, or other local issue could impact the archive along with the primary mail server. 9

10 A software solution can also be the most expensive solution to manage on a longer-term basis, as IT staff in-house need to maintain and monitor the underlying hardware as well as make ongoing configuration changes to the software itself. Last but not least, a software solution cannot provide continuity in the event that primary mail server is off-line. And a software solution for spam and virus protection will typically not be integrated with a solution for archiving. Appliance Solutions An appliance solution typically consists of a pre-built set of hardware running specialized software, specifically for the purposes of filtering and/or archiving data. Appliances can be deployed to a wide variety of sites, as they are not directly tied to a mail server or operating system. They may also be easier to manage than a software solution. An appliance solution can be an expensive option, requiring an initial capital investment to cover both the software and hardware inherent in an appliance. Additionally, an appliance will need to be replaced every few years, requiring time and expertise, as well as periodic additional capital investments. An appliance, like a software solution, will also have limited capacity and may not grow with the needs of an organization s storage requirements. Also similar to a software solution, the appliance represents a single point of failure. Appliances may also suffer from being stored on the same site as the businesses primary service. In the event of a disaster involving fire, theft or loss of building the appliance may suffer the same fate as the server. Appliance solutions also may provide security but not continuity or archive capabilities. Indeed, an appliance has limited capabilities as a continuity solution, as it will be susceptible to the same network issues as the mail server itself. Cloud Based Services Cloud-based services, also known as Software-As-A-Service (SAAS) solutions, are hosted in the Internet (or Cloud ). They benefit from being easy to deploy, and can be easily accessed from any location. Good solutions are engineered to have multiple points of redundancy so that they will be always available on a 24x7x365 basis. A SAAS security solution filters for spam and viruses in the cloud, and delivers only legitimate s to a business s server. This reduces an organization's bandwidth requirements as well as the processing requirements of its mail server. Cloud-based security solutions can provide integrated continuity. In the event of an issue with an organization s server, users can be re-directed to the Cloud-based service where they can from any location continue to send and receive . This reduces 10

11 WP0005-v1.0-EN the urgency to restore the on-premise solution, and makes migrations or changes that require downtime much more manageable. Cloud-based solutions also benefit from being a secure and trusted environment for sending outbound s. By delivering outbound messages through the cloud service, an organization can avoid being blacklisted, as outgoing s are checked for spam and viruses, and would not be permitted past the 3rd party host which stakes its reputation, and those of all its clients, on maintaining a healthy environment. As an archive solution, a cloud-based solution offers geographic redundancy for the message storage, providing greater reliability compared to an on-site hardware or software solution. A cloud-based solution also automatically scales to meet a customer's requirements, whether that is to provide additional protection in the event of a large spam run or denial of service attack, or to provide additional storage space for a growing archive. Generally, cloud solutions are the easiest and fastest solution to deploy with minimal training required, no hardware or software to install or configure, and a 3rd party providing the infrastructure and assisting with deployment. Cloud-based services also benefit from being an Operating Expenditure (OPEX) as opposed to a Capital Expenditure (CAPEX), meaning little or no up-front investment and predictable on-going costs with no risk of obsolescence. Last but not least, a cloud-based solution can provide a single integrated answer for security, continuity, and archive - saving money and time for both administrators and end users. Longer term, cloud-based solutions may appear more expensive than on-premise solutions, due to their ongoing monthly costs. However, those costs include all the infrastructure necessary to provide reliable and seamlessly scalable services, which has the result of reducing other expenses for the business - namely those for network bandwidth, IT staff time, hardware and software costs, and of course the on-going periodic costs in maintaining and upgrading on-premise hardware and software over time. Conclusion The author of this White Paper concludes that a Cloud-based, integrated security, continuity, and archive solution is the best solution for the majority of businesses. A Cloudbased solution is ultimately the fastest and easiest to deploy, provides the most effective continuity options, offers the potential to grow with the business, and reduces both the time and cost of on-going maintenance requirements. 11

12 2011. GFI Software. All rights reserved. All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. 12