If you are using a cloud email hosting service, you will often find that the company offering you the service also adds in an email security feature for your protection and their goodwill. However, some hosted exchange providers also offer you the option to choose your own email security solution, so it is essential to have a good idea about this.

Hosting emails on the cloud can be totally secure if you choose a security solution that provides most of the following options.

The first of these is solution against spam. These are grouped under “Spam Filtering” and “Advanced Spam Protection”. The former is a simpler algorithm that helps protect your inbox from spam. The other is a more advanced solution that uses advanced statistical analysis to block spam.

Besides just obnoxious, but not malicious, spam, there are also the malicious virus, Trojans, and rootkits (programs that self replicate) that can harm your email service. There are malicious programs that attach themselves to your outbound emails, and a good security solution should protect against all of these. It should be able to scan your attachments, inbound and outbound, as well as displayed or not displayed images that send out location information or otherwise do unwanted things.

A secure cloud email solution also needs to provide protection from phishing, and offer general fraud protection. Known as social engineering, phishing and email fraud is an attempt by hackers to get secure information like credit card details, important passwords, social security information and the like, from unknowing users who fall into their traps.

There is another harmful hacker attack, known as Denial of Service, or DoS. This can utilize a user’s email account or computer to send millions of emails or other sorts of data request to an entity, thus overloading that entity’s system, so that it can longer process legitimate data requests from legitimate users. A secure cloud email hosting solution should be able to provide protection from letting your emails or computers be used in this way. It should also be able to protect its own hosted exchange from DoS attacks.

A good security solution will provide quarantining options, where identified spams are stored. If identification is a “false positive,” this allows you the option to retrieve the email and white list it.

Good security solutions also provide real-time monitoring, since hacks can occur at any time. They provide reports to the admin, about hacking or other unwanted activity, so that you can step up protection. Finally, it should also offer encryption of transmitted data, so that even if hackers do manage to get into your system, they will not be able to decrypt your sensitive data.

There are many cloud computing solutions out there, from the likes of Google, Microsoft and Symantec. When choosing your provider, look for these security offerings. With these, cloud computing can be very secure.