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Tips for maintaining business activity during cyber attacks

We will never get tired of saying that there is no such thing as zero risk in terms of cybersecurity. According to the study “The current state of cybersecurity in Spain”, prepared by Deloitte, 94% of Spanish companies suffered at least a serious cybersecurity incident throughout 2021. These cyberattacks usually occur through email, and that is why it is so important to have control and security systems that allow us to prevent such attacks and ensure continuity in our work.

Companies rely heavily on digital communication internally, but also with their customers and suppliers to deal with issues as important as estimates, purchase orders or invoices. If email is unavailable, ongoing business processes can quickly come to a standstill, negatively impacting business activity.

This threat affects all types of organizations: from very small companies to public organizations and hospitals. We can take as an example the European Banking Authority (EBA) of the EU, which had to close its email system for two days due to a security flaw in Microsoft Exchange. Depending on the intensity and duration of the outage, the cost of downtime can quickly run into the millions, not to mention the damage to customer relationships and brand image.

Thanks to the regular updates, Most security solutions are reliable and catch many threats early, but even the best defense mechanisms never offer complete protection.

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Therefore, to be sure of maintaining their activity, companies must equip themselves with an email continuity solution, also known as failover, an emergency system that is always active in the background and, in the event of an attack, intervenes to ensure that email communication continues to work. These solutions work like fully protected backup mailboxes and direct the emails of a company through its own and independent email system, thus guaranteeing uninterrupted communication with third parties.

To find the right continuity solution, five criteria must be taken into account.

A pre-provisioned mailbox

In the event of an email infrastructure failure or outage, the priority is to get back up and running as quickly as possible to maintain important business processes. Therefore, a quick transition to continuity service must be ensured. To do this, the solution must have pre-provisioned mailboxes, which can be accessed from anywhere without technical barriers. This is the only way that employees can easily reconnect in the event of a failure.

Email history and contact details must be in sync

In addition to the availability of the email system itself, access to stored data, such as important conversations from the last few weeks or contacts, also plays an important role in operational security. Without accessible contact details, the phone as an alternative communication channel is often of little use, especially since unified communication systems are also often affected by a mail server failure.

Therefore, the email continuity solution must be continuously active in the background and synchronized with the company’s database to avoid any loss of contacts or information.

Always have an alternative to Microsoft Exchange

In order for email communication to work without errors in the event of an infrastructure failure, the business continuity solution must be configured as a secure online service outside of the company’s regular infrastructure. Most companies use Microsoft Exchange as their email server, and therefore it is a good idea to establish a failover solution based on workarounds to mitigate a possible problem originating from Microsoft Exchange.

The importance of emergency mailbox usability

The ease of use of emergency mailboxes also influences the choice of an email continuity solution. The portal, in addition to being accessible from anywhere without technical barriers, must be intuitive and easy to use from any type of device (smartphone, tablets, etc.).

Ensure compliance with regulations

Andrés Garcia Cordero_Country Manager Retarus SpainEspecially in international companies, communication processes are subject to increasingly stringent data protection requirements, especially since the General Data Protection Regulation. Therefore, it is always recommended to use services that allow companies to be aligned with current regulations.

Andrés García Cordero, Country Manager of Retarus in Spain.

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