What’s in a name? Branding, labeling and trademarking are essential components of business identification. Your organization provides solid services, builds great products. How is an email address with someone else’s company name going to help you build and scale your brand? It’s time to rethink your business strategy if you are trying to market your brand via webmail or an email account provided by ISPs. What’s a better way to make a first impression for your brand than to send emails from <yourname@yourcompany.com>? What does your business email address say about your business? Are you operating out of you mother’s garage or operating a legitimate business entity that is concerned with protecting the privacy of your clients?

In 2017, Yahoo confirmed that ALL 3 billion email accounts on their mail servers were hacked in 2014, leaking private and sensitive data all over the web. Imagine trying to operate a business with a Yahoo email account the day after an announcement like makes the news. Now how does that webmail account compare against Office 365 and Exchange? How do you want your organization to be perceived when you communicate with your customers? Should your customers be afraid your organization isn’t concerned with protecting the privacy of your clients? Is your brand memorialized in the email name or is your brand growing in a sea of webmail accounts?

Additional benefits of ditching your webmail account for running your business include spam filters, advanced features such as identification of internal/externally generated emails, lower maintenance costs, phishing controls, tracking and monitoring tools, and the ability to disable and contain accounts that have been compromised in seconds. With Exchange Online, your organizational information is more secure as Microsoft staffs cloud monitoring resources to ensure their email servers can be held to the highest standards for information storage ISO 27001, FISMA, and HIPAA.

Let’s go Phishing (pronounced – fishing). Phishing is the act of generating malicious emails sometimes with stolen or spoofed (fake) credentials, designed for the target to usually click on content in the email which executes malicious code. For example you may receive an email that says you have a delivery order waiting outside, at a pickup hub, or that you need to click on a link to sign for delivery the next day. A busy employee that’s not paying full attention on first glance of the email would click the link and then… the sky’s the limits. The malicious code that was just run could do anything from embedding ransomware on the machine to replication across your servers contaminating your network and possibly compromising sensitive or private information.

Cloud email solutions such as Office 365 are a great way to showcase your brand, increase brand value, and save money by reducing the need for on premise resources that are required to maintain, secure and monitor your communications solutions. Office 365 also includes complimentary productivity and collaboration applications. Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneDrive are great ways to manage day to day operations, while Teams and SharePoint are excellent tools for secure collaboration with team members whether they work for your organization or another company.

The biggest wins for organizations are the reduced costs associated with implementation, change management, along with ongoing maintenance and support. With Microsoft’s Office 365 solution, you can trust your brand is protected so you can focus on brand management and continual growth instead of worrying about brand and repetitional damage. Schedule a consultation with a Migrt8Te solutions expert today to assess your organizations needs and provide you with an implementation roadmap and strategy. We have over 30 years of experience implementing migration solutions that will save your organization time and money while giving your business a polished and professional look and feel.