Email Security Intelligence - Security Spotlight: Open Source Email Security Solutions

In this interview, Dave Wreski discusses Guardian Digital's email security solutions and the myriad advantages of investing in these solutions to secure your email. 

Interview with Dave Wreski, Founder and CEO of Guardian Digital

Interviewed by Brittany Day, Director of Marketing, Guardian Digital.

Dave Wreski is the CEO and founder of Guardian Digital, a company that provides open source email security solutions to the many email-related threats that impact individuals and businesses. Mr. Wreski started Guardian Digital as an Internet security enterprise offering open source solutions to critical business problems in 1999. Since then, the company has narrowed its focus to email security specifically. The products that Guardian Digital offers are highly effective in preventing phishing attacks, spam and malware. Dave Wreski is an expert in the field of email security, as well as an open source advocate and active member of the Linux community. In this interview he shares his knowledge of email security, email-related threats and the solutions to these threats that Guardian Digital provides.

Guardian Digital's email security solutions are unique in that they utilize open source development and open source software. In your opinion, what advantages does open source email security provide over alternative proprietary email security solutions?

There are multitudes of inherent advantages of open source development and open source software that we take advantage of in order to provide our customers with the very best email security solutions. Compared to proprietary methods, open source development often results in superior products because many developers are able to collaborate and improve upon ideas, leading to high levels of innovation in engineering. We believe open source software is more secure over its lifecycle because of the transparency and accessibility that are characteristic of open source. Vulnerabilities in open source products are generally detected and fixed more rapidly than the proprietary alternatives. The specific open source programs we have chosen to use for our email security solutions have a long history of being highly secure and any vulnerabilities that existed have been identified through peer review and fixed. Finally, open source products are standards based, making them freely accessible to everyone, unlike many proprietary alternatives.

In your opinion, what are the shortcomings or downfalls of many email security solutions on the market today? In what ways is the email security that Guardian Digital provides superior?

Guardian Digital’s email security solutions offer many advantages over the solutions that our competitors offer. We utilize a purpose-built operating system that is designed to be extremely secure. We adhere to the latest standards in email security, which include implementing the highest level of encryption to protect information from unauthorized parties.

Guardian Digital also provides the highest level of security for all of the email security solutions we offer, unlike many companies which require that customers pay more for higher levels of security.

Can you talk a little bit about how being an active member of the Linux community has influenced your views on email security? How has Linux impacted Guardian Digital as an enterprise?

We are very passionate about Linux and open source and have used it as the foundation of everything we do since our inception in 1999. It is an extremely reliable operating system with customizable software. As a result, we have always been an active member of the Linux community and give back as much as we can. One way we have done this is by sponsoring the development of LinuxSecurity.com, a website that Linux users can visit for the latest security-related and open source news.

What do you feel are the biggest email-related threats that exist today? What do you recommend that companies do to protect themselves from these threats? How do the services that Guardian Digital offers protect organizations from current email-related threats?

Phishing is one of the most dangerous email-related threats because of the financial damage that can result from these types of scams. Phishing attacks have become highly targeted and sophisticated, making them very difficult to detect. Spam is another significant problem because it has become so prevalent and because of the negative impact it has on all email users. Spam is difficult to detect and block and decreases worker productivity. It is also a serious problem because spam emails can convince people to share personal information or transfer money to criminals. Using a comprehensive, state of the art email security solution like the ones that Guardian Digital provides is the most effective method of protection from any email-related threat.

Guardian Digital's email security solutions are cloud-based. Can you discuss the various advantages of cloud services in regards to email security?

Our open source cloud-based email security offers our customers various advantages. First, the server is built to be highly secure, adding yet another element of security to our solutions. Emails must pass through an additional filter before they reach end users.
We are able to store spam in the cloud, where we either eliminate it or quarantine it. We have developed highly secure cloud-based solutions to protect email accounts so that companies and individuals can focus on other aspects of business and life.

Guardian Digital prioritizes top-notch customer service. In what ways is outstanding customer service a critical aspect of an effective email security solution?

Offering our customers outstanding support and services is and always has been a priority for us. In many ways, the quality of the services we offer is just as important as the email security products we provide. Being an open source email security company, we view the unrivaled service we offer our customers as the unique value that sets us apart from other enterprises. We realize email is a critical business function, and have designed our services to ensure we’re there to help every step of the way with ensuring your email is always secure.
Guardian Digital is the first of its kind to take the best-of-breed tools in the Linux community and integrate them into enterprise email solutions with an intense focus on security and unrivaled customer support, designed to ease information technology overhead for its customers.
It is this pioneering role we have played in engineering an unprecedented level of Open Source security that has made Guardian Digital trusted by so many clients worldwide for almost twenty years.
We don't just use existing programs, but have also developed a whole infrastructure of services around them. We are continually at the forefront of the security field to ensure that our engineers preserve our leading edge products and services as threats continue to evolve.

About the Author

Brittany Day is Director of Marketing for Guardian Digital. Passionate about open source and security, Brittany enjoys working in a fast-paced business environment that challenges her creativity and her desire to communicate new secure email strategies and services to our customers.

Brittany is also heavily involved with reporting and analytics to assist with getting our customers more involved and creating a better understanding of the increasing value we provide to our users.

Brittany grew up in New Jersey and is a graduate of the University of Oregon.