As an email expert witness for hire, it is important to keep up to date with email system technologies. Over the last 30 years there have been significant changes to how we use email, and email systems. Today, cloud technologies have taken over, with most organizations using either Microsoft Office 365, or Google GSuite. It is relatively easy to gain experience in both of these products, but as an email expert witness, that is not enough.
SMTP Transport Flow
A broad knowledge of the SMTP mail transport flow is also required. Also required is a clear understanding of how an organization can have a private email system within a cloud service, where the cloud servers are shared. Being able to explain the security boundaries in place between different email systems for a cloud scenario will add credibility. Deep experience in email systems and email delivery, along with direct experience in a range of email system technologies should be sufficient for a good email expert witness. It cannot be expected to have deep experience in every related product offering.
Threat Defense Gateways | SMTP Expert Witness
With increasing compliance requirements, organizations are increasingly using complementary technologies alongside Microsoft Office 365 and Google GSuite.
Examples, are email archiving systems, and threat defense gateways. A 3rd party threat defense gateway will often be set as the first delivery point for an inbound internet mail, before being passed to the main part of the email system. Logically, the email gateway, and the mailbox email service should be regarded as being within the same email system – in terms of email delivery. They are to be regarded as mail servers within the same email system.
Being able to articulate this, with examples, can be a critical argument to make before having to demonstrate whether an email was deemed to have been delivered into any target email system.
Examples of different threat defense gateways would be: Agari, Proofpoint, Barracuda. These are all feature rich products with a myriad of email threat defense mechanism, such as message hygiene, and mail flow rules. It is usual for any email administrator of any email system to also manage the 3rd party mail gateway (if it is present). Compliance determines that the email platform owner should have jurisdiction and control of their entire email system.
Hire an email security expert to do an Email Security Assessment Report on your email system. This will ensure you are adhering to the latest email security measures.
When a 3rd party email security gateway is used, any email forensics investigation will need to take care when examining the DMARC policy. The email gateway product is an individual component of an overall email system, and should be part of any DMARC policy.
An email system can be tied together by the email domain name, which will be registered within each different entity. For example:
- MX Record
- SPF Record
- Mail flow rules
- Mailbox storage
Hire Rob Walton | Email Expert Witness
As an effective email expert witness, having a broad set of knowledge across multiple email platforms, and email gateways, means that they will carry high credibiity.
Contact myself, Rob Walton, for a no obligation discussion about your email expert witness requirements.