Empower MSP Amsterdam—Email Security as Part of a Multilayered Defense

In his session, Dreas vanDonselaar, director of product management, introduced the SolarWinds^® Mail Assure^™ product to the audience, and set out how it was an integral part of a layered defense strategy. 

“Mail Assure is founded on the principles of delivering a best-in-class product using our technology and data, offered at a competitive rate, and designed to deliver an amazing user experience for plug-and-play usage with maximum control and transparency over your email,” said Dreas.

He went on to highlight four of the key attributes of the Mail Assure solution:

• Best-in-class advanced threat protection for inbound and outbound email and email archiving 
• In-house developed technology that secures over two million domains, which constantly fuel the self-learning technology of Mail Assure with new email-born threat intelligence  
• Rock-solid reliability and stability with built-in email continuity
• A multilevel, multilingual, and intuitive control panel for all user types and weekly updates for improved control and transparency

To be fully spam-free, you need technology and data 

“Our technology has been developed in-house. This is relevant because this way we can modify anything in our technology stack if required,” said Dreas. “We also cut out any risk of a black-box situation where we don’t 100% control what is happening. There are only a handful of companies that have internally developed all their email security technology.” 

He went on to explain that technology alone won’t deliver good products. You need data to fuel the self-learning technologies. “Spam is both a local as well as an international problem. We need as much data as possible to stay on top of new outbreaks and to fuel the predictive and self-learning technologies behind our software,” he said.  

He added, “Over 13 million domains have been added to our system by our customers, and in the last period, we actively processed email for two million domains per month. 

“So we have the technology and we have the data. This puts us on the level of a very select group of email security vendors that also have great technology and enough reach for enough data to fuel the email protection.” 

Security is critical to protect your customers

Dreas cited PhishMe’s Malware Review, which claims that 91% of cyberattacks and the resulting data breaches begin with a spearphishing email, and 97.25% of the samples analyzed contained a form of ransomware—making it the most used form of malware in phishing emails. These stats show that email protection is a crucial part of your layered defenses. 

“In this environment, MSPs and their customers need as much email protection as possible,” he added. “Take the example of Office 365. It is true that these collaboration tools include an email security layer; however, a growing trend is to bundle these solutions with an external email security product. The bigger the mail or collaboration platform in terms of the number of users, the more spammers will actively tune their spam runs to specifically bypass the security filters of these solutions. This means there is a real need for additional security to prevent them from getting through.”

He went on to explain how control and visibility over email flows is becoming more important to users, which is sometimes lacking with some collaboration tools. Bundling Office 365 with Mail Assure creates additional value, quality assurance and help ensure MSPs can differentiate their offering in the marketplace.” 

How Mail Assure gives you control

Dreas went on to show how Mail Assure offers you the control you need with:

• Incoming Filtering
  Get protection against spam, viruses, ransomware, phishing, and any other email-borne threat. “We include by default—some competitors charge for it—full 24/7 email continuity,” he added. “In the case that a company’s primary email service goes down, Mail Assure queues the email in the delivery queue. Users simply log in to the Mail Assure web interface to read, reply to, and compose emails without interruption.”
   
• Outgoing Filtering
  Prevent genuine IPs from being blacklisted as a result of unknown abuse leaving the network from hacked accounts, blocking spam and viruses from leaving your network.  “Mail Assure also reports on which accounts caused the abuse and provides auto-locking tools,” added Dreas.
   
• Email Archiving
  Email archiving is good governance for all businesses, large and small.  “We take a copy of every message, encrypt it, compress it, and build up archives. We also offer safe storage of all inbound, outbound, and internal email, as well as a near tamper-proof chain of custody to support e-discovery and compliance needs,” added Dreas.

He then went on to provide a high-level product demo.

Dreas concluded his presentation by saying that the Mail Assure team doesn’t typically communicate product roadmap details, as they are subject to change. However, there are a number of things in the pipeline and the Mail Assure team is committed to deliver a best-in-class email security solution and heavily focus on customers’ feedback when planning new product features and update releases. 

To find out more about Mail Assure, click here.

SolarWinds MSP considers various features and functionality prior to any final generally available release. As such, comments given in this article are not (nor should they be interpreted to be) a commitment from SolarWinds MSP that it will deliver any specific feature or, if it delivers such feature, any time frame when that feature will be delivered. SolarWinds MSP is always trying to improve and enhance its products. All discussions herein are based upon product team current interests, and product team plans and priorities can change at any time.

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