MailStore Is Keeping an Eye on Security: Enhanced IT Security for SMEs

Hacker attacks have targeted the German Bundestag, and companies face the threats of digital economic espionage and data theft: These are real causes for alarm. Even within small and medium-sized companies, IT doesn’t just play a ‘supporting’ role anymore; it is increasingly becoming an important component of the value chain. An IT malfunction means a loss of revenue. For that reason, SMEs NEED to get to grips with security for their IT systems. Machines are regularly maintained, tools undergo quality assurance, and fleets of vehicles are kept up to industry standard through regular technical inspections. But it’s relatively common for IT to be neglected, even though it is becoming more and more important for achieving company objectives, as well as more complex in general, what with digitalization processes. That may sound harsh, but that’s what we’ve been observing in our daily contact with small and medium-sized companies. Even if a highly qualified IT officer on the company side prioritizes the topic of IT, they often lack the resources to initiate important projects, because the company management is not au fait with IT security or views it primarily as a cost factor. Data security, particularly regarding customer data, is particularly important in light of the GDPR. Intended or unintended data breaches can entail severe penalties.

“When you go to some companies, it feels like you’re in Fort Knox – there’s a security service, registration, registration form, and visitor pass – but if you have an insight into IT, the doors are wide open to potential hackers. That simply won’t do, and that’s what we want to change at MailStore,” says Daniel Weuthen, Director of Engineering at MailStore. “Since we consider ourselves to be a partner to small and medium-sized customers, in the future, we don’t just want to ensure that email archiving is merely enough to satisfy increased security requirements; we also want to help design IT infrastructures to be more secure from the offset. We’re taking the same path as big players on the IT scene, such as Microsoft and Google.”

Gradual expansion of security features

We are consistently expanding security features for our email archiving software. For instance, we have heightened security for Version 10 by preventing unauthorized access with modern encryption. Starting with Version 10.2 of MailStore Server and the MailStore Server Provider Edition (SPE) we have begun to gradually adapt the services provided by our products, and will enable exclusively encrypted communication in the future. For example, the new responsive Web Access is only available via an encrypted HTTPS connection. MailStore Server users will also receive a notification if they attempt to access the email archive in an unencrypted manner via HTTP. That being said, unencrypted access was also not possible in the Service Provider Edition in the past.

We don’t want to give away too much, but we’ll let you in on a little spoiler: In a forthcoming Version 11, there will be further improvements made to the security standards. These won’t just be limited to email archives, but will also apply to any outgoing or incoming communication.

We at MailStore are fully aware that heightened security and expanded security features present greater challenges for the administration of our software and the infrastructure connected to it. For that reason, we have set ourselves the goal of raising awareness among our customers so that they know that IT security is not just a luxury, but an absolute must! As a reliable partner to our customers, we see it as our duty to offer them the best possible level of security for their email archives. But we also want to make it clear that IT security must be given significantly more attention in the future, which is unfortunately not the case in most situations at present. By rolling out many further, gradual innovations, we wish to contribute to email security as well as to drive forward our customers’ entire IT environments to meet the security challenges of both the present and future. We will be sure to regularly inform you about these developments on our blog.