RE: The answer is, "you cant"

["Mike Molloy" <mmolloy () coenholdings ie>]

I would agree with Dave and go further by saying that an external
company could never be as responsive to your companies needs as you
could be. Our parent company outsourced their email, however on seeing
our system could be customized and statistics obtained in minutes
instead of days or weeks they are now installing a new mail system based
on ours. Email does not have to be insecure just because you allow
Marketing license to use it as a marketing tool, after all it is very
good for that purpose. Think long and hard before outsourcing so
fundamental a tool as email.

Regards
Mike Molloy
IT Supervisor


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Hartnell [mailto:enzeit () xtra co nz] 
Sent: 21 October 2003 23:20
To: Nicholas Diotte
Cc: com, Secuirty Basics with SecuirtyFocus.
Subject: The answer is, "you cant"

Hi Nick. My 2c worth is this.

Outsourcing your email services to a 3rd party not only creates a
security
risk but also a commercial one. You would essentially relying on a 3d
party
to protect your corporate image and reputation.

Internal and external email is a fundamental service and responsibility
for
you to provide and also a key way you can enable marketing to help grow
your
business. Emails contain a lot of commercially sensitive information and
none more so than marketing. Control over how and when that information
is
sent is vital to protecting your companies competitive advantage.

I would review the reasons you dont allow marketing to include quality
content. I assume it either size or security considerations)

Having been involved in marketing before, I can say image does matter.
The
look and feel of email content, presentations etc are important to
looking
successful.

Try this approach. Sit down with marketing, find out what content
exactly
are they looking for in their emails and agree on some standards that
meet
those needs and are balanced against what you feel are important IS
considerations. Then allow them to use your own servers for the job.

All will win, you haven't opened it up to all and sundry (just
marketing),
Marketing get what they need. You haven't exposed your company to risk,
commercial or otherwise and you have enhanced your reason for being and
should be happy that you are contributing to the bottom line in a
meaningful
way.

Kind regards


Dave Hartnell
Company director.
Enze IT.



-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Diotte [mailto:xphox () xphox net]
Sent: Wednesday, 22 October 2003 7:40 a.m.
To:
Subject: How can you trust a company you don't know?




Greetings List,

Recently I've been asked to look into a product, that a company I've
never
heard of sells.  The company in question has a service that our
Marketing
Department would like to purchase.  It being computer related, IT gets
final
say.

Basically this company is advertising, "Fully-Branded Emails".
Currently we
restrict our Marketing Dept. from using "fancy" HTML emails, and only
allow
them to send plain text.  However this company will allow them to send
Rich
Text, and HTML emails.  They will even provide what seems to be
impossible
reporting, dynamic content (via database), and custom emails based on
user
interaction (in other words profiling).  Basically I'm assuming each
email
will contain embedded hidden pictures, etc that will track what users
are
doing.  A little scarry for me, as the last thing I want is our company
emails being picked up by spyware scanners, etc..

I've done some basic research on the company and they do seem rather
legitamite, however I have found traces of them on a couple mail abuse
lists.

Basically it's an opt-in newsletter, how it works is you give them a
subdomain, and point the MX record to their mailserver.  But how do I
know
they won't spam from our domain, how do I know they won't sell the
opt-in
list, and what about user tracking...  Do I have to alert our
subscribers
that they will in fact be "profiled"?

What steps would you take if you needed to look into a company and give
a
report to your VPs, giving the product a yeah, or nah.

Thanks,
--Xphox

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