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Is Your Email Security GDPR Ready?

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On May 25th 2018, the European Union (EU) will introduce its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR is a set of regulations meant to protect personal data of EU residents, and enforces data privacy rules on how organizations collect, store and use the information. Failure to comply with the EU GDPR regulation carries heavy penalties including fines of up to €20 Million or 4 percent of global turnover. This includes information exchanged over email. According to Infowatch global data leakage report, email is the second largest channel for data leaks.

Some key elements of the regulation include:

  • GDPR applies to all organizations that process the personal data of subjects residing in the EU, regardless of the organization’s location.
  • Breach notification will become mandatory, and must be done within 72 hours of first having become aware of the breach.
  • EU residents have the right to obtain confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning them is being processed, where and for what purpose.
  • The right to be forgotten entitles the residents to have the organization erase his/her personal data, and cease further dissemination of the data
  • Privacy by design calls for the inclusion of data protection from the onset of the designing of systems, rather than an addition.

Here are certain implications of GDPR on an organization’s emails and email security:

  • Personal data is classified as any information that includes personal email addresses, phone numbers etc. that are commonly used for marketing.
  • Organizations in regulated industries such as retail, finance and healthcare have to deal with added layers of complexity to comply with competing regulations
  • To implement appropriate technical measures to comply with “privacy by design,” organizations must include email encryption and compliance capabilities to their email security infrastructure.

To comply with GDPR, key capabilities to consider while evaluating your email security include:

  • A comprehensive multi-layered approach that provides strong inbound and outbound protection
  • Sandboxing and quarantining of any unknown email attachments to prevent breaches
  • Strong encryption and DLP for compliance and regulatory requirements

Download our tech brief to learn more about SonicWall Email Security’s compliance and encryption service, and how it can help you comply with the EU GDPR.

DOWNLOAD TECH BRIEF

Enemy at the Corporate Gate: Why Email Security is More Crucial Than Ever with Dell and SonicWall

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Note: This is guest blog post by Bryan Chester, Vice President of North America Partner Software and Imaging Sales at Dell.

Email has long been acknowledged as a business critical application. However, it can expose your organization to devastating sabotage by offering hackers an easily accessible vehicle to exploit vulnerabilities in your organization’s network security.

There are a multitude of repercussions if email-based threats such as ransomware, phishing, or viruses make it into your email servers and users’ inboxes.  Given today’s complex threats, it is crucial that organizations deploy a multi-layered security solution that includes dedicated, leading edge email protection.

Even with the knowledge of that threat, it is becoming increasingly difficult to accurately detect all of the bad emails without creating a bottleneck and dampening your employee productivity. This is especially true for emails containing attachments.

So what can you do to protect your environment at an email level while not slowing down your critical business processes? Dell and SonicWall can help you answer that question.

SonicWall Email Security leverages multiple patented SonicWall threat detection techniques and a unique worldwide attack identification and monitoring network. This next-generation SonicWall Email Security solution protects your organization from today’s most advanced email threats.

SonicWall Email Security includes the cloud-based Capture ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) service that can scan a broad range of email attachment types, analyze them in a multi-engine sandbox, and block dangerous files or emails before they reach your network. Email Security with Capture ATP gives you a highly effective and responsive defense against email threats, all at a low TCO.

SonicWall Email Security features include:

  • Advanced Threat Protection: Integrates Capture cloud-based sandboxing technology for detection of zero-day threats such as ransomware, for fine-grained inspection of SMTP traffic
  • Next-generation Email Protection: Incorporates anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-spoofing functionalities to not only detect and prevent spam and other unwanted email, but also scan email messages and attachments for ransomware, Trojan horses, worms and other types of malicious content.
  • Improved Office 365 Support: Enhances security for multi-tenant environments by providing a method for ensured, mapped delivery of emails for SonicWall Hosted Email Security environments
  • Updated Line of Appliances: Refreshes SonicWall’s line of Email Security Appliances (hardware and virtual options), helping customers to better face threats delivered by email.
  • Encryption Protection: Supports not only SMTP Authentication, but also the encryption service feature enables any email containing protected data to be automatically encrypted, routed for approval or archived.
  • Policy and Compliance Management: Enables an administrator to enact policies that filter messages and their contents as they enter or exit the organization. This allows organizations to meet regulatory requirements based on government legislation, industry standards or corporate governance activities.
  • To learn more download the SonicWall Email Security 9.0 data sheet or view a live demo of the SonicWall Email Security Solution to see all of the latest enhancements.

Reach out to your Dell and SonicWall contacts today to learn more about how SonicWall Email Security can protect your organization by scanning all inbound and outbound email content and attachments for sensitive data, all while delivering real-time protection from spam, phishing, viruses, malicious URLs, spoofing, Denial of Service (DoS), and a myriad of other unknown and sometimes unimaginable attacks.

SonicWall Email Security 8.3 Delivers New Spam Detection and Authentication

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Summertime means different things to different people. Whether it be kids enjoying time off from school, or parents taking long family vacations, summertime gives everyone an opportunity to re-energize and re-focus.

Everyone that is, including hackers.

Threats to your infrastructure don’t take a vacation, and if you’re entrusted with securing your organization email, it’s important to not leave your guard down during these warm summer days.

SonicWall Email Security solutions continuously protects your email infrastructure from ever-increasing threats including spam, phishing attacks, and malware. And, now you can rest even further knowing that the protection provided by SonicWall Email Security has been improved once again. Our latest release, Email Security 8.3, delivers more effective protection against emerging threats, through the following key features:

  • New Spam-Detection Engine – utilizes both a retrained Adversarial Bayesian model, as well as a new machine learning model which leverages a Support Vector Machine approach
  • SMTP Authentication – if you’re concerned about preventing unauthorized users on your infrastructure, new SMTP authentication requires a user to authenticate prior to sending outbound emails

Additionally, SonicWall Email Security solutions continue leveraging a robust architecture to deliver superior protection with the following features:

  • Multi-Layer Protection – proven, patented, email scanning technologies deliver superior real-time protection
  • Automated Management and Reporting ““ minimize required administration time
  • Compliance & Encryption Management – protect against confidential data leaks and compliance violations
  • Flexible Deployment Options – to best meet business infrastructure requirements, including on-Premise, Virtual, and Cloud-based
  • Scalable – ability to configure for growth and redundancy, allows your infrastructure to grow as required without requiring large upfront costs
  • Multi-Tenancy – enables MSPs to provision and manage email security services for multiple customers

SonicWall System Architecture

Graphic of SonicWall's System Architecture of Email Security 8.3

SonicWall Email Security provides the comprehensive protection needed, so maybe you too can enjoy your summer!

SonicWall Email Security 8.3 is available today for download for those with a valid license. For more information please contact your preferred reseller, reach us directly at 888.557.6642 or sales@sonicwall.com, or visit us for product detail here.

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How to Enforce Email Compliance and Encryption to Satisfy Users

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If you’re like the majority of internet users, you mostly access the internet from your mobile devices. And by the way, so do your customers. In fact, 2014 was the year that mobile traffic exceeded legacy PC traffic on the internet. Business success, now more than ever, requires that you provide a great, mobile user experience, Email continues to be a key communication tool for business. Although email communication has been a primary application for mobile devices for many years, secure email exchange, ensuring email is encrypted to protect sensitive data and to comply with industry and regulatory requirements, is typically optimized for a legacy PC user experience.

With the widespread use of smartphones and tablets in business today, email encryption solutions must provide a seamless user experience across all devices. Unfortunately, many legacy solutions and services were not designed to function well on these devices, leaving users frustrated or unable to access or manage encrypted messages and files on their smartphones and tablets. If your business is subject to industry compliance or regulatory compliance to protect sensitive data, or if you’re concerned about protecting company intellectual property, it’s increasingly important to deploy an email encryption service designed and optimized for use with mobile devices that provides the seamless user experience subscribers and recipients want and need.

If you’re interested in learning more about requirements for protecting sensitive data, including how to ensure the secure exchange of email containing sensitive customer data – and simplify compliance in the process.

Read this white paper for details about achieving regulatory and industry compliance when moving:

  • PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
  • PHI (Protected Health Information)
  • Proprietary data
  • Any other types of sensitive information
DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER

You’ll get a side-by-side look at specific HIPAA/HITECH and PCI-DSS compliance regulations, and how the SonicWall Email Encryption service helps you meet each of them, and provides a great user experience for both legacy PC and mobile users.

Secure Email Data for HIPAA Compliance: Protect Your Business

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Protecting sensitive or confidential data is not just good business. For some, it’s legally required and subject to audit. For example, HIPAA regulations require organizations to take reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of all communications that contain patient or customer information. Health service providers and their business associates and contractors who touch or handle Protected Health Information (PHI) are subject to these rules.

Organizations such as physician’s offices, hospitals, health plans, self-insured employers, public health authorities, life insurers, clearinghouses, billing agencies, information systems vendors, service organizations, and universities could all be considered covered entities and/or business associates or their subcontractors. In addition, mandatory reporting is required for HIPAA violations, even when the data is lost by a third party.

This increases the need for subcontractors to implement the same level of security typically found in larger organizations. The penalties for failure to conform to HIPAA regulations go far beyond the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. They include public humiliation, loss of reputation, brand damage, class-action lawsuits, and yes, even prison. But there are practical ways to avoid these penalties.

Here are some methods to secure your moving data:

1. Do an assessment.

If you do nothing else, at least do an assessment of where your PHI resides, how you get it and where you send it. Knowing where the data is that you need to protect, and how it travels, is the first step.

2. Add layers of security in case people make mistakes.

One of the most common causes of any kind of security breach is human error. Whether conscious, accidental, or simply due to laziness, human error can result in Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Protected Health Information (PHI) being sent over the Internet as unencrypted text unless content filters are put in place to detect these messages and encode or reroute them safely. You need to:

  • Install smart filters that analyze both the email and its attachments
  • Correlate fields in both documents and attempt to match them to known patient databases
  • Encrypt messages before they’re sent over the Internet

3. Make sure the boundaries between systems are secure.

Communication security breaches commonly occur when data is transferred between two or more systems. It can happen whenever data is transferred between:

  • People within your organization’s firewall
  • People inside and outside your organization’s firewall
  • Your employees and your business associates (and their subcontractors)
  • Your employees and your customers/ patients
  • Two different systems

Whenever information passes between systems and people, the data needs to be secured at all times, even when in transit. You must also ensure the data that is sent to people outside your firewall is always sent in encrypted format, so that no one but its intended recipients can read it.

4. Make sure your internal communications are secure.

Employees who work from home present HIPAA boundary issues. It is critical that they securely transfer data from work to their home computers. Even though your business information will remain within your company it must still pass across the Internet securely. To prevent a mistake that compromises protected information, provide email encryption to any employee with access to PHI.

5. Make sure your business associate and subcontractor communications are secure.

Another boundary issue arises when employees interact with external business associates and subcontractors. It’s likely that they must regularly transfer sensitive information with these external contacts. And they may use different email systems than those in your office. Often, client or patient PII and/or PHI needs to be sent via email. Be sure to secure these emails with encryption that works with many different systems and devices, including mobile devices i.e., smartphones and tablets. Healthcare related institutions must use solutions that make it possible to communicate with anyone, anytime, anywhere, no matter what email system or device the other party uses. Likewise, you must demand the ability to securely transfer large files with all these same people.

6. Make sure your communications with telecommuters are secure.

Employees who telecommute comprise another set of boundary issues.

More medical professionals are working from home and often need to transfer large, important and time-sensitive files such as x-rays or mammograms as attachments through your email system. Because the files can be so large, they have the potential to bring your email system to a standstill.

Not only do you need to exchange these files securely, you need to send them in a way that does not overload or crash your email system. So you either must find the time, the budget, and the resources to set up file transfer sites for these large files or you can use encrypted email with a secure large file attachment capability. Either way, you must make absolutely sure that they comply with encryption guidelines.

7. Make sure when your patients communicate with you, everything they do is secure.

Your patients must often submit forms, ask questions of specific people and departments, or submit follow -up information about an ongoing illness or other matter. These communications often contain PHI. Until recently, these needs were served by paper-based processes, but now can be handled through secure electronic forms on your website. But how do you ensure that this data reaches the right department or employee to process it? And can this data be integrated into existing knowledge worker software to track its status? If the request contains sensitive information, is it received from the patient in a secure manner, or did the method of collecting data cause a privacy violation? And if any follow up is needed with the patient, can this be sent securely? With a messaging system in place that provides secure inbound and outbound service, uses email encryption and secure electronic forms, and provides workflow integration, you can streamline your operations and cost-effectively serve patients.

8. Make it easy to transfer even very large files securely.

FTP, or file transfer protocol, is the standard way to transfer files across the Internet. However, it transmits user login credentials and the contents of files in an unencrypted manner. So this is not the secure method needed for transferring. You need a secure messaging system that automatically routes large files, alerts the recipient that they are available, and that tells you when they’ve been opened and by whom.

9. Make sure you can demonstrate that your system is secure.

After an email message is sent, how do you know what happened to it? Did its intended recipient open it? Were its attachments opened? Is there proof that the message was received and was read? Should a question arise about who viewed a message or its attachments, can you prove who read them to an auditor? It’s increasingly obvious that a secure messaging system must be trackable and auditable. To make this possible, messages and their attachments, their metadata and the fingerprinting data must be both viewable and traceable. The fingerprint data must record permanently the IP addresses of the recipient’s computers, and the system’s time must be synchronized with an atomic clock so that message times are never a point of dispute. Such a system would allow your administrators and, if necessary, auditors to easily review and sort through volumes of message information, and quickly retrieve a particular message, as well as all the tracking and fingerprint information associated with it.

If you’re interested in learning more about requirements for protecting sensitive data, including how to ensure the secure exchange of email containing sensitive customer data and simplify compliance in the process.

Read this white paper for details about achieving regulatory and industry compliance when moving:

  • PII
  • PHI
  • Proprietary data
  • Any other types of sensitive information

You’ll get a side-by-side look at specific HIPAA/HITECH and PCI-DSS compliance regulations, and how the  SonicWall Email Encryption service helps you meet each of them.

DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER