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In the early days of email the Internet was small and a
very friendly place. In today's world the internet became a
great and essential resource for people world wide. With the
growth of the net came also ever expanding risks. Today
virus protection is no longer optional nor are firewalls.
You should consider every reasonable security measure
available to you.
By default all email related communications between your computer and
the email server are clear text data exchanges. Some email
clients may encode the username/password combination using
base64 encoding but this is by no means equivalent to
encryption. Encoding is basically a simple translation that
can be quickly reversed by pasting the encoded string in to
a converter.
For enhanced security we recommend using a secured and
encrypted session when sending or receiving emails. The
setup of encrypted SSL connections requires in most cases
simply to check an additional box on the setup screen as
well as entering the correct port numbers should those not
automatically populate.
Ports used for encrypted email access:
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POP3 |
995 |
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IMAP4 |
993 |
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SMTP/ASMTP |
465 |
Webmail access via a browser to our systems is by default
encrypted using SSL.
Security is important even if you do not have
confidential data When you use a public unencrypted wireless
access point or "hotspot" your data is transmitted on a
shared medium (the air) and a knowledgeable person nearby
can grab your data from the air. This person would be able
to obtain your username/password combination as well as all
pertinent email server settings by sniffing the airwaves.
With the same method your neighbor may be able to obtain
this information via your unencrypted wireless home access
point or in some cases even by sniffing the cable modem
traffic. Even so you may believe you have nothing to loose,
an intruder still can obtain valuable information from your
emails. Some examples would be: Monitoring your email as a
first step to identity theft Requesting a new password from
your financial institution (bank, stock broker, 401K) Using
your email account to commit fraud Using your email account
to send SPAM messages.
 It is easy to see that email security does not only
affects people with important functions. If your account is
compromised you may end up repairing damages that can take
months to fix. Using a proactive approach and encrypted email
access does give you an additional layer of security. You
only need to configure the encryption once and from that
point on all your email traffic will be encrypted.
Like all security measures secure and encrypted email is
just one part to the puzzle. You also should use complex
passwords as well as other measures to assure your online
experience is a safe experience. Please consult us if you
require additional help to secure your business.
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