Protecting yourself and others from internet-borne threats

Employees working in small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) can expect to receive more than double the volume of spam per user each month than those working for larger enterprise-sized organizations.

That’s a quote from the latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report.

The reason, you won’t be surprised to learn, is that the defence mechanisms used by such companies are less sophisticated. And you’ll probably be even less surprised to learn that MessageLabs has a solution for you.

A while back I had to produce a report for a major museum on a sustainable development project. The report was to be delivered by 7am on a particular day. I burnt the midnight oil and delivered in the small hours. I was woken from a deep sleep by an irate customer demanding to know why I hadn’t sent the report.

We had to wait for the IT department to investigate. Another couple of hours wasted. Eventually, the answer came back: “It was blocked because it contained the phrases ‘homo sapiens’ and ‘return on investment’.” It was a museum, for goodness’ sake. A short while later, the museum handed its email management over to MessageLabs.

MessageLabs interposes itself between your organisation and the outside world. Its managed email and/or web security services trap anything which could prove harmful. You make no investment in appliances or special software. You just decide how much protection you require and pay according to the number of people you need to protect.

As with all managed services, it takes care of updates. Its servers are on 24/7 and are distributed around the world.

If you’re concerned about keeping your organisation safe from inbound and outbound security breaches, you might like to look at MessageLabs’ Small Business Solutions.

If you’re interested in more insight then independent research organisation, Vanson Bourne, has conducted research into SMB security vulnerabilities on MessageLabs’ behalf. That’s the UK version. There’s also a US Version.

David Tebbutt is an award-winning columnist and feature writer who specialises on the subject of using software and technology to increase business productivity. He's an analyst with Freeform Dynamics but, in previous lives, wrote for Director magazine, Real Business and was also editor of Personal Computer World. http://freeformdynamics.com