Email is one of the most important communications tools for businesses. When it stops working, people start to get nervous.

While there are many things that a user can do to mess up their email, many of these problems can be resolved with a restart of the software or the computer.

However when the old standby of restarting doesn’t work, it is time for the email administrator to start looking into the issue a bit more deeply.

Here are some of the more common errors found in Outlook 2007 along with some of the ways you can make things right again: Continue reading 5 Common Outlook Errors and How to Fix Them

When you don’t understand something that your job requires you to know, the most logical thing to do is research the topic and learn as much as you can about it. For many people who find security as part of their job description, learning as you go is the only option available. Yet despite the fact that there is so much information readily available to us, misconceptions regarding email security still confuse many professionals tasked with maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of email services. Continue reading Misconceptions About Email Security

When looking at solutions on securing email, many people don’t take into consideration the type of business environment they work in. All too often, after spending a great amount of time and money, small to medium-sized enterprises find out that what works for a company the size of Bank of America doesn’t quite work for them.

To better help SMBs find solutions scaled to their needs when it comes to email security, I have compiled a list of 5 tips that address the risks and restraints that they face. Continue reading 5 Essential Tips for SMB Email Security

Advanced persistent threats make email security a necessity

Most email administrators consider security to be a large part of what they do. With so many laws and regulations governing the storage, discovery and retrieval of email messages, security has become a second job to many.

Unfortunately, many administrators either forget, or simply aren’t aware, that securing email requires much more effort than hardening the email servers against attack. In order to fully protect your organization’s email and their contents the mailbox also needs to be defended. Especially when you consider how popular Advanced Persistent Threats are becoming with large cyber crime syndicates who use email not only as a way to harvest sensitive information, but also as a method of attack through phishing and social engineering. Continue reading Tips for Better Email Security

Getting your co-workers to adhere to policies that govern the use of email in the workplace can be tough. Despite your best efforts, email is still used to send jokes, chain letters, pictures, slide shows and other inappropriate content.

For whatever reason, people don’t quite get that not only are email policies in place to protect them and the company brand, but there are consequences for violating these policies. Unfortunately, the only time when people begin to comprehend just how serious email policies are is when it is too late.

Continue reading Email Scandals That Should Make Us Think Twice

In just one week Google, the International Monetary Fund and Citigroup have all made headlines as a result of email associated with them being under attack. The reason we continue to see companies make the news as a result of email attacks is that email security is sometimes ignored when it comes to training users properly and making good decisions. In some cases, having the latest and greatest when it comes to security tools even creates a false sense of security that causes us, and our users, to overlook the little things. A multi-layered defense that has been properly configured with all the best technology can be rendered useless if the little things are forgotten.

Continue reading 5 Simple Mistakes When it Comes to Email Security

Everyone knows that without an active practice of management in place that our lives and every facet of our businesses can result in a chaotic existence. We need to manage our checking accounts, our income and expenses, the food we eat, the amount of paperwork we keep, etc.

The same concept of management applies to our email systems. We need to implement a usage and accounting email system to track and report how much of our computer resources are being consumed so that we can properly bill out to the various departments we support in our organizations.

Administrators also need to monitor the flow of emails that are incoming and outgoing from their systems so as to create trending reports and to project when systems will become overloaded. Trending and analysis of email communications make it easier for administrators to request additional resources from their IT departments in terms of bringing newer and larger systems online. It may be that those resources are physical in nature or that the newly requested resources are virtual resources. The point is that, without monitoring and managing their systems resource usage and having the corresponding reports to support their trend analysis, administrators will have a tougher time in asking for upgrades or more system resources.

Continue reading 5 Email Management Benefits

Exchange 2010 SP1 offers significant capabilities for data storage and retention, all of which can be greatly enhanced by the addition of third party archiving solutions. These solutions can increase mailbox storage to virtually unlimited capacity, provide for search and discovery, reviews for compliance and internal investigations, disaster recover scenarios, and more, all by maintaining a complete record of all messaging that is kept separate from the Exchange infrastructure.

Continue reading 3 Ways to Implement Exchange 2010 Archiving

Email has become a vital part of our lives, crucial in to business and the way we work in this new information age. With literally billions of email messages being sent every single day, it has become quite literally indispensable. Each business worker sends an average of 36 emails a day, and they receive as many as 74 in return. This huge volume brings into sharp focus issues of mailbox size, as well as the attachment size for files that go with the emails that we send and receive.

Specifically, I am considering the issue of email attachments from the perspective of businesses and their employees.

Most corporations, in order to try and balance storage capacity with backup and restore time, and data recovery, will place restrictions on the size of their users’ mailboxes. Companies will also restrict the size of an attachment that users can send via the corporate email server. Sometimes, companies will also place restrictions on the size of email attachments that can be received as well.

Continue reading The Tricky Question of Balancing Mailbox Size Limits

Is your email inbox literally bursting at the seams every time you open it? If it is, then don’t you think that perhaps it’s time to get a little more organized? Having an overflowing email inbox is the main cause of your email client slowing down, and it also means you waste time not being able to find crucial emails in a hurry.

I understand it might seem like a daunting task to get yourself organized, but it’s really not so difficult when you know how. The first step on the road towards organization is cleaning up your inbox, followed by some intelligent archiving of your emails. In this post I’m going to outline my simple Microsoft Outlook system for keeping my emails tidy, and I’ll also throw in some tips on how you can archive your older emails too. And even if you use another email client instead of Outlook, you can probably apply these tips anyway.

The most important tool that Outlook has is the AutoArchive feature. It allows you to do all kinds of things, including directing where archived data should go and specifying how old items need to be before they are archived.

Continue reading 7 Tips For Managing Outlook Email Archives