Ener Systems Helps Customers Reduce Risk and Simplify Business Continuity with Dropsuite’s Email Protection Service
As a Managed Service Provider (MSP), Ener Systems acts as the IT backbone for contractors in various industries, including construction, HVAC, plumbing and electrical. Their clients depend on them for risk management, cybersecurity, data protection, and to mitigate threats like ransomware or email compromise.
René Miller, CEO and co-founder of Ener Systems, is a trusted leader in this space, and has been featured in three cybersecurity documentaries on Amazon Prime, Cyber Crime: The Dark Web Uncovered and Cybercrime: Investigations, and CyberCrime Fallout.
Many businesses mistakenly believe that their email data is fully protected because it is stored in the cloud. However, cloud providers like Microsoft and Google are only responsible for maintaining infrastructure, not customers’ data.
MSP’s often struggle to educate clients on the importance of robust email protection, as many business owners mistakenly believe that their cloud based email is automatically secure and archived. This misconception is especially common in companies with small IT teams, who may assume their data is protected when it isn’t.
“A lot of customers just expect their email is protected,” says Miller. “If you ask a client, ‘Would you be surprised if I told you that you couldn’t restore your email if Microsoft 365 went down?’ most of them would be shocked. They don’t realize the risk until it’s too late. We help our clients understand these risks and plan for ‘what could go wrong.’ That’s where Ener Systems brings value.”
Without a third-party email archiving and backup solution, businesses face serious vulnerabilities. Ener Systems recognizes this risk and acts by implementing Office 365 email protection through Dropsuite Archiving, safeguarding clients from potential data loss.
Miller is a strong advocate for educating customers on the importance of email archiving. To support this, Ener Systems has developed a series of educational videos and resources to help customers understand the evolving nature of cybersecurity threats.
Far beyond simple long-term storage or compliance, Miller regards Dropsuite’s Microsoft 365 email archiving product as a tool for ensuring business continuity, providing an immutable email record and preventing data loss.
As a result, Ener Systems makes email archiving with Dropsuite a core service, ensuring that every customer is protected from unexpected data loss or security threats.
“Sometimes a customer accidentally deletes an important email. A legal proceeding may require a legal hold to protect the chain of evidence, or a search through years of email during e-discovery. Then there are times when an employee or contractor tries to cover their tracks by deleting incriminating messages. In cases like those, when an MSP maintains an immutable archive with the entirety of what has been backed up, it means a lot less risk for the customer.” – Rene Miller
Miller highlights the critical role that Dropsuite’s email archiving plays in business continuity. “It’s very clear what Microsoft can and cannot guarantee,” Miller explains. “For example, while there haven’t been many instances where a company’s Microsoft 365 tenant, including cloud email, has been encrypted and held for ransom, I’ve seen a proof of concept. It’s possible. Or an Azure outage could make email inaccessible for hours. But with archiving from Dropsuite, our customers could still find and restore saved messages.”
This is why having third-party backup, like Dropsuite, is an essential element in avoiding disruptions to your client’s businesses. Microsoft even recommends that customers use a third-party solution to ensure their data is fully backed up.
Beyond outages and ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) is another critical risk. Attackers may impersonate legitimate users, intercept messages, send fraudulent emails, and attempt to delete any evidence of their activity. With Dropsuite, customers can easily search through their archives and track down the complete history of such incidents.
Storage is another factor. “Think about how much email users save and how large local mailboxes can get,” says Miller. “We find that once you reach 40 gigabytes of email stored locally, Outlook starts performing very poorly. We set up archiving rules for automatic deletion in the Microsoft 365 tenant and limit local storage to about six months. Dropsuite makes it easy for users to search through older messages in the archive, so we direct users there.”
What drew Miller to Dropsuite was its straightforward, efficient approach to archiving.
“I chose Dropsuite because it’s an end-to-end solution that integrates directly with Microsoft 365,” Miller explains. “Other vendors required us to route traffic through their networks, which was a non-starter. With Dropsuite, we connect via the Microsoft Graph API directly into the customer’s tenant, and archiving begins seamlessly.”
The simplicity of Dropsuite’s setup—typically completed in just 15 minutes—and its cost-effective pricing were key factors in Miller’s decision. “MSP customers are price-sensitive, and Dropsuite’s pricing structure fits right into our offering,” he says.
One of the most significant benefits of Dropsuite’s archiving solution is its ability to create an immutable backup. An immutable backup refers to a backup that cannot be altered, deleted, or changed once it’s created, ensuring data integrity. This is particularly important in legal situations where an unaltered, original version of an email is required, or during cybersecurity incidents when malicious actors attempt to erase their tracks.
“Whether it’s for legal holds, e-discovery, or protecting against internal fraud, an immutable backup provides our clients with peace of mind,” Miller says. “It reduces their risk by ensuring that the entirety of what’s been backed up is available whenever they need it.”
Dropsuite Email Archiving can help companies comply with their requirements for privacy and data access. Miller highlights how Dropsuite email compliance software helps data protection officers easily search archives for specific terms, phrases or email contents. With just a few clicks, they can restore data to a previous location, to new folders outside the original mailbox, or even to exported PST files for offline access.
Dropsuite also allows users to set custom retention periods – whether it’s months or years – after which messages are automatically archived or deleted based on regulatory needs.
“Customers sometimes call with legal issues,” Miller notes. “Their attorney might request a legal hold on client correspondence to preserve evidence, or their legal team might need to conduct eDiscovery searches across a certain time period. They specify searches on fields like date, sender, recipient, subject line, body contents, and more. Dropsuite is ideal in those situations because the archive is immutable, and customers can easily search through it, export the results to Outlook PST files and hand them off.”
Another critical feature that Miller and his clients benefit from is journaling, which ensures that all email communication is continuously captured and preserved. Email journaling involves the recording of every email sent and received by an organization. This capability is especially useful for legal discovery, internal audits, or situations requiring a detailed communication history.
“Journaling is indispensable when legal teams need a complete history of email correspondence,” Miller points out. “Even if an email is deleted from a user’s inbox, it’s still available in the journaled archive, providing our clients with a secure, tamper-proof record.”
Beyond archiving, Ener Systems also uses Dropsuite to enhance business continuity planning.
“Microsoft is responsible for maintaining infrastructure, but not our clients’ data,” Miller explains. “So, if an Azure outage happens or emails are encrypted during a ransomware attack, our clients can still access their archived emails with Dropsuite.”
Moreover, Dropsuite’s email compliance features help data protection officers meet regulatory demands. Whether for GDPR, HIPAA, or other requirements, Ener Systems sets custom retention periods and enables eDiscovery tools that make it easy for clients to locate and recover emails based on specific search criteria.
To Miller, cybersecurity is an evolving process, not a one-time solution. That’s why Ener Systems has made email archiving with Dropsuite a baseline offering for all clients.
Miller is in frequent contact with MSPs in other regions. He notes that like him, his peers strive to help their customers recover from accidental deletions, navigate legal issues and maintain cyber-resilience, all while keeping operations running smoothly.
“Cybersecurity is not a destination, it’s an ongoing evolution” says Miller. “We have to continually find new ways to protect our customers’ data. That’s why we’ve made email archiving part of our baseline offering. Dropsuite’s interface makes it easy for any IT professional to set up archiving, verify it’s working properly, search archives, and restore email messages anywhere they need. I gladly recommend it to my peers around the country.”
Email archiving is more than just a regulatory requirement—it’s a key part of ensuring business continuity and safeguarding your data from unexpected threats.
With Dropsuite’s powerful and easy-to-use Microsoft 365 email archiving solution, you can reduce risk, streamline legal compliance, and keep client operations running smoothly even when faced with the unexpected.
Contact us today to get started with Dropsuite and ensure your email is always safe, secure, and accessible when you need it most.
Ener Systems, a managed service provider (MSP), understood the need to implement a reliable email protection service for their clients to safeguard business operations. Dropsuite was the ideal choice, offering seamless integration with Microsoft 365 and advanced regulatory compliance solutions.
End-to-End Solution: Dropsuite archives directly from the customer’s Microsoft 365 tenants, ensuring secure, automated backups.
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