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5 Ways Email Archiving Protects Your Business

For many organizations, large and small, having a system in place to preserve emails is critical. How would you know if important emails are being deleted at this very moment? Do you have a method in place for quickly retrieving messages or attachments?

Email archiving solutions store a read-only searchable backup of the data either onsite or offsite using a combination of hardware or secure cloud storage methods. An automated system extracts each message along with any attachments from designated accounts. The information is then indexed and stored for access later. Anyone with access can then use search filters to track down received or sent messages.

Additional Protection for Your Business

Archiving solutions are different from simple storage solutions because they store the data in an unmodified format that offers search capabilities. A typical backup solution does not store this information in an organized, read-only format, which is required for compliance and legal discovery. Here are 5 ways email archiving benefits your business:

  1. Data Preservation & Recovery – Natural disasters are inevitable and often times unavoidable. In these situations, data on drives can be destroyed by storms, making data recovery even more essential. Email archiving supports this need as well as any other data preservation objectives.
  2. Legal Discovery & Compliance – Email archiving makes it easy to retrieve one or more messages in an unaltered format. Having this capability is beneficial in litigation cases where message information must be retrieved as part of the discovery process. It also helps your company remain compliant with federal regulations.
  3. Quick Message Retrieval – If you’ve ever accidentally deleted an important message, email archiving maintains the original format and provides an organized solution for quickly retrieving the message. It takes just a few seconds to find and retrieve the contents of that email.
  4. Centralized Storage & Administration – Email archiving solutions provide a centralized solution that is easy to manage. Employees do not have to spend countless hours maintaining message data, which allows for easier data management and improved productivity.
  5. Cost Management Benefits – Archiving delivers cost-savings opportunities by reducing the amount of required resources for backing up this data and reducing the number of hours needed to maintain them.

Additionally, the process frees up space on email servers, thus reducing the amount of stress put on them. It also eliminates the potential side effects of accidental deletion or lost messages. Most importantly, the introduction of an email archiving solution ensures your business is protected regardless of unexpected situations. By using a dependable solution, it is easy to remain compliant with federal regulations, protect this data, and retain critical company knowledge.

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Tangent’s archiving solution simplifies compliance and litigation by automatically archiving email and social media posts – all at a cost that meets your budget. Learn more about DataCove.

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How DMARC Helps Prevent Email Spoofing and Phishing

When you think of spoofing or phishing emails, you probably associate them with an email attack. But what does this all mean, exactly, and how can your organization avoid them?

A Brief History

As early as the 1970s, spammers were able to get around email filters and eventually grew into a global cybersecurity issue in the 2000s.

To help combat this, email security protocols were introduced to help stop email spoofing and phishing. As a result, many spoofed emails get sent directly to spam or junk folders.

Spoofing and Phishing

If you’ve ever received an email from an unknown sender with a rather suspicious-looking link, chances are it was a phishing email. Phishing emails aim to extract sensitive, personal information. It can be easy to spot a phishing email if it’s from a sender you’re not familiar with, an unrecognizable company or domain, or you’ve noticed a misspelling.

Email spoofing, on the other hand, is used to trick recipients into thinking the email came from a trusted person or entity, such as your employer or bank. A recognizable sender email address is more likely to lead the recipient to click malicious links, open malware attachments, and even send sensitive data. Spoofed email sending addresses that were not sent from your organization can tarnish your brand’s reputation. So how can your organization prevent this?

Email Authentication Protocols

If your domain was being used in an email spoofing attack, would you even know? Organizations can protect their brand and domain by putting email authentication protocols in place.

DKIM, SPF, and DMARC are email authentication technologies that help improve your email deliverability and email security. Without these in place, your organization’s domain is vulnerable to email hackers who are able to send spoofed emails to your customers or employees using your domain.

DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, works by attaching an encrypted DKIM signature to the email, which is then verified by the receiver or receiving system. Implementing DKIM is a great way to protect your organization, employees, and customers from targeted email attacks

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework and is another type of email authentication technology. Domain owners use SPF to specify the emails they send are coming from their verified list of email servers. An SPF record verifies the IP address of the sender and compares it to the domain owner.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) is a relatively new email authentication policy and reporting policy compared to SPF and DKIM. DMARC works by building upon SPF and DKIM mechanisms to validate the sender of an email. With a DMARC record, senders indicate that their email messages are protected by SPF and/or DKIM. It also instructs the receiver of what to do in the event that SPF or DKIM do not pass, such as sending the email to a junk folder or rejecting the email entirely. Furthermore, DMARC allows the receiver to automatically report a pass and/or fail DMARC evaluation and other details to the email address owner.

Protect Your Brand Reputation

Together, these three protocols will help protect your organization from spoofed and phishing emails sent from your domain. To learn more about DMARC, or to get started with a DMARC Record Configuration, visit dmarc.tangent.com.

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