Whether they want to place all of their protection in the cloud, or add it as part of a comprehensive, multi-layered approach to network security, Zyxel’s new Cloud Email Security service provides a great option for customers, says Thorsten Kurpjuhn, Market Development Manager Europe at Zyxel.
We all understand the benefits of the cloud and many organisations now have a ‘cloud first’ policy. They see it as being more flexible and scalable and less risky.
One of the big benefits of the public cloud is that it is completely outside the organisation. That means you can access software, services and data that resides from anywhere, at any time. It also means that whatever happens in the cloud will not affect your on-premises IT systems. And indeed, that anything that happens internally, won’t impact your cloud-based systems.
Short-term risk
This includes security. If the normal, everyday protection that you have on your PC systems and servers on-premises, is not fully updated or does not function correctly for some reason, you will be vulnerable. Even if this only happens for a short time, it’s a risk.
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But if your security is in the cloud, you don’t need to worry about any such possibility. The threats never even reach your network or endpoints. It also means that you do not need to keep the security software up to date. This approach has a lot of appeal for many organisations today – and especially those that are putting ‘cloud first’ and it is the main reason Zyxel’s has now introduced its own cloud-based email protection service.
The Zyxel Cloud Email Security service is available on subscription and will provide robust protection against all kinds of malware and threats and filter out all forms of Spam and phishing emails, before they are even sent to your system. Like most good ideas, it works in a very simple way; incoming messages destined for your email server are intercepted and diverted to our security servers for checking. Once they have been cleared, they will be sent on to you.
Multi-layered protection
Now, you may think that with such a service in place, you could rely on it entirely. It would no longer be necessary to have multi-faceted protection at the entry point to the network, such as that provided by our unified security gateway (USG) appliances, or to have anti-virus / anti-malware software installed on client devices? You could certainly do that if you wanted to. We are entirely confident that our Cloud Email Security service will provide you with a very good level of protection.
But it’ is not what we’d recommend for everyone. If you want to make absolutely sure you are taking every precaution and minimising the risk in every way that you possibly can, you still need that multi-layered protection that you can only get by placing a number of effective barriers on the entry points to your network and continuing to run security software on your systems.
A good option to have
As we all know, cyber criminals are smarter, more organised, better funded and more determined than ever. They are always finding new ways to get around the different defences that stand between them and your network. The best way to minimise the risk is to have a number of security system and measures in place that makes it harder for them to get into your network and remain there undetected.
For this reason, we think that while there are many customers who will welcome the option of having cloud-based protection and may opt to use the Zyxel Cloud Email Security service as their main line of defence against malware and Spam, there will be plenty of others who will want to use it as an additional layer for protection. Either way, it’s a good option to have.
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