Securing E-mail

E-mail has become an important communication for most businesses, and has become critical to many organizations. E-mail is used to communicate with customers, suppliers and partners as well as coordinate activities between associates. So, when e-mail has trouble, the operations of the organization are at risk.

A client used Microsoft Exchange extensively to manage all aspects of their business operations. The client had noted problems with e-mail. After reviewing the system, a corruption in the Exchange server was discovered as well as problems with the server itself. This represented a significant risk to the business.

To mitigate the risk, e-mail for over 30 people was temporarily migrated to Google Apps for Business with no e-mail loss. A new server was acquired with a clean install of Exchange. E-mail was then migrated back to Exchange without loss.

The greatest challenge in moving e-mail service is managing the domain name change (the part after the @, e.g. example.com in john@example.com). For a period of time, example.com will refer to both the old and new e-mail service, delivering e-mail in both locations in an unpredictable way. During this engagement, a technique was developed to guarantee delivery in a predictable manner.