Security as a service

WHITEPAPER

Security-as-a-Service: Threat mitigation from the cloud

You can’t treat security as a set of isolated point systems. That’s true of your business information in general and of your email architecture specifically. Protecting information is one side of the coin; making it available and accessible is the other and if you do both right you can improve productivity as well as avoidrisk. The cloud isn’t just the most effective place to secure email, before any threats or intruders ever reach your network; it’s also the most efficient. Cloud-based email services can offer full protection with the promise of availability and reliability too.

Contents
03 Securing email in the cloud
04 Email intelligence 04 Managing email security yourself 05 Risk management and security 05Fragmented security systems 03 Security with universal accessibility

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Making security a service
06 Security in the cloud 07 Anti-malware 07 Anti-spam 08 Zero-day protection 09 Policy enforcement 10 Audit trails 10 Securing the cloud 06 Security with Mimecast: at rest, in transit and in use

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Security is holistic
11 Scaled-up security

Executive Summary

Securing your email isa complex process that takes time and uses resources that can be better deployed elsewhere in your business. Moving on-premise email security into the cloud not only saves time and money, but also reduces risk and takes advantages of economies of scale to deliver an effective, dedicated security platform that unshackles users and releases the potential of your mail. A cloud email platform needsto have four key features: • Confidentiality • Integrity • Availability • Control That’s what you get from Mimecast’s security services, without having to patch and update a mixture of different security tools in your own network. It’s a complete risk management and compliance platform, with anti-malware, anti-spam, zero-day protection, and policy enforcement. At the same time, there’s a completeaudit trail and secure encrypted storage on the Mimecast® storage grid.

www.mimecast.com

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Securing email in the cloud
Security with universal accessibility
Security is more than keeping unauthorized users out of your network and viruses off your desktops. It’s not just about encrypting data or blocking spam, monitoring compliance, ensuring privacy or protecting company resources,important as all of those are. If you take the wider view, security means ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of business information. While line-of-business applications and back-end databases are crucial, more and more of that business information is in email on desktops and laptops, which makes it both convenient and vulnerable. It doesn’t matter where in the value or supplychain you are, you’re relying on email for all manner of vital communications. Securing email – at rest, in use and in motion – is a key part of any IT security strategy and doing that in the cloud has significant advantages for confidentiality, integrity and availability. For one thing, you’re protected from spam and malware before it ever reaches your premises; keeping up with thousands of newthreats a day is an unnecessary battle for individual businesses to fight. For another, as with other cloud services you’re gaining the expertise and economies of scale of a dedicated service, which means savings on up-front costs and ongoing administration, making a big difference to how quickly you can see value from the system you put in place. And for email in particular, having it protected inthe cloud means it’s available in the cloud; as convenient as having it on your laptop but without the security risks. That makes the difference between security that gets in the way of users, forcing them to resort to insecure workarounds to get their job done, and security that gives you the flexibility and control to allow business users to stay productive. At best, security is usually seen as...