3 Tips to Help You Secure Your Email Server

Email is a crucial part of any modern business, but it’s not always the most fun topic to cover. It’s more of a necessity than something super exciting, like machine learning or automation. Still, this does not make it any less important, so why don’t we discuss some of the ways you can make sure your organization’s email server is as secure as possible?

Here are a couple of tips that you can keep in mind for adjusting your business email server settings.

Make Sure You Have SMTP Authentication

Email clients work with Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a process in which an email application sends messages to a server; these messages are then relayed to their eventual destination. Authentication is the simple act of checking to see if the user who is sending mail is logged into the system with credentials. If your email server is configured correctly, only those who have accounts should be able to send emails through your server, so you absolutely need to have this authentication enabled. If you don’t, your email server becomes an open relay, which creates problems for your company in the long run.

Restrict Your Mail Relay Parameters

When considering open relays, you must make sure that your own email server is configured in a way that means others cannot abuse it. This means that your email server should only be routing messages for specific IP addresses or domains. This setting stops your email server from sending spam messages to other users. The more you restrict this setting, the more you are restricting this from becoming an issue for your company.

Protect Against DoS Attacks

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks can overload servers with so much traffic that they cannot function properly. These types of attacks are commonly used by hackers to disrupt operations of their targets. To keep these attacks from occurring, you can limit how many connections your email server can accommodate at any given time. Through proper control of these settings, you can lessen the impact of these types of attacks and minimize downtime as a result of them.

If this email talk goes over your head, that’s okay. There is no shame in relying on others for help with setting up or configuring an email server. It’s the same as with any other task with which you are uncomfortable, ask for help when it is needed! It’s better than configuring your email server incorrectly and having to correct it later on down the road.

BNMC can help your business by becoming its very own IT management resource. Not only can we help you set up your email server, but we can also maintain it and ensure that any adjustments to its configurations are made without a hitch. Plus, if you are not comfortable with hosting your own email server, we can do that for you, too. This lets you focus on your business rather than the technology that lets it run.

To learn more about how we can help your business, reach out to us at (978) 482-2020.