For my weekly article in SecurityWeek, this time around I opted to look at email and its relationship – good and bad – with SaaS, which has become the dominant solution for new CRM deployments.
The driving force behind an enterprise opting for a SaaS deployment model is typically related to cost. The organization gets access to a feature-rich solution at a lower cost in fixed infrastructure and on-going software maintenance. However, SaaS as a model for CRM can have a downside when it comes to email—the potential for deliverability problems.
Email is an integral function of CRM and can be effectively used as a customer notification tool, as well as a tool for new customer acquisition because of the nature of a CRM system. But the very nature of SaaS, being multi-tenant and a shared application infrastructure, means that conflicts can occur between companies using the SaaS provider, affecting email deliverability.
In the article, I elaborate on these potential issues in order to better educate security admins about potential pitfalls and to offer solutions for these possible challenges. We dissect the challenges around spam and look at the some of the important differences between on-premises and SaaS IP reputation and the abilities of SMTP in protecting IP reputation and the integrity both types of CRM systems.
Potential solutions to challenges covered in the piece include detail around purchasing private IP space from the SaaS provider, using a third-party SaaS provider for email that integrates with the CRM provider’s system, and advice around routing email from the SaaS provider’s system through an on-premises email infrastructure.
Hopefully the insights shared in my SecurityWeek article will help avoid email deliverability problems due to shared email infrastructure when outsourcing CRM functions to a SaaS provider.