Email Security

In addition to the other IT upgrades in progress, we have been focusing on email security.  We have made a few changes in the last few days, and are planning a few more to come.

Quarantine Mail

Some of you may have notice an email in your inbox this morning from quarantine@messaging.microsoft.com.  The email contains a list of emails that were blocked from your inbox, and gives you the opportunity to download any emails you wish to receive.

Until very recently, we did not block any email that was addressed to you.  This email is a result of recent changes.  We implemented this feature to reduce the amount of spam and other unwanted email that arrives in your inbox each day.  The quarantine email is a daily summary of the email that we are blocking.  You only receive one email each day rather than receiving perhaps dozens of spam emails over the course of the day.

This will not block all spam, but hopefully reduces the amount that you receive.  Note that some mail is delivered to your mailbox and is diverted to your junk mail folder.  You may want to check that folder from time to time as well.

Encrypted Mail

Another feature recently added is the ability to send secure encrypted messages.  All internal mail is already encrypted.  But when you send to an outside party, email must necessarily be unencrypted in order for the recipient to be able to access it.

The firm now offers an option to send emails and attachments in a more secure way.  If you type  "securemail" or "#securemail" into the subject or text of an email, the recipient will receive a notices that says:

"You've received an encrypted message from [sender] To view your message Save and open the attachment (message.html), and follow the instructions. Sign in using the following email address [recipent's address]."

The email contains an attachment called "message.html" which the recipient must download and open.  It contains a message:

"Encrypted message
From [sender]
To [recipient]
To view the message, sign in with a Microsoft account, your work or school account, or use a one-time passcode."

If the recipient is already a Microsoft user, he/she can log in and access the text of your email and any attachments.  If not, the recipient can request a temporary pass code which is sent as a second email from Microsoft.  The recipient can use that code to access the content of your email.

If this sounds like a number of extra steps for the recipient, it is.  You may also get calls from recipients saying that this email looks suspicious to them.  Many hackers send similar emails to get users to download suspicious html files and open them on their computers.

Despite these concerns, you should use the secure mail option for any emails that contain private information.  This can include personally identifiable information (PII) such as birth dates or Social Security Numbers.  It would also include any medical records protected under HIPAA.

Box Links

If you want to get confidential information to someone outside the office, and do not want to go through the securemail option, there is another option available to you, at least for the offices that have already converted to Box.  Instead of attaching a file containing private information to an email, you can upload the document to Box.  Then, send an email to the recipient with a link to the document on Box.  The recipient can click on that link and download the information over an encrypted connection.

Multi-factor Authentication

Another feature that is coming soon is multi-factor authentication (MFA) also sometimes called Two-factor authentication (2FA).  We are implementing this because of the ever increasing number of hacker attacks on our email accounts.   With this implemented, a hacker cannot access your email, even if he/she knows your password.  Once you enter your email and password, you will be asked to enter a separate code, that is texted to your smart phone.

Once you have authenticated your computer or other device, you will not need to go through the process again, at least for a period of time, after which we may reauthenticate your device.

Again, it is an extra step, but one that is needed to provide the firm with better security.  We have not implemented MFA yet.  We are still working out a few details.  I wanted to let everyone know that it is coming soon.

Handling Suspicous Mail

In our ongoing efforts to protect our network and our client data, we have created a special email where you can send any suspicious emails  that you receive.  If you get anything that looks suspicious, please forward it to spam@margolisedelstein.com.  Do not open any attachments or reply to the sender.  Just forward the email for our evaluation and testing.  It is important that you do not attempt to act on the message yourself.  Hacking attempts via email are becoming more sophisticated every day.  If you have the slightest doubt, suspicion, question or hunch about an email, please forward it to the spam@margolisedelstein.com address for evaluation.

Changing Your Outlook

We are still on schedule to move to a new email service over Labor Day Weekend.  We will be bidding goodbye to Google's G Suite and moving to Microsoft's Exchange Online.

For the past few weeks, we have been  migrating your mail, contacts, and calendars to the new system.  This process is still ongoing.

Outlook Users

If you already use Microsoft Outlook for your work email, you are currently connecting to Google Mail to receive and send messages.  We will need to point Outlook to Microsoft's system at the appropriate time.  To facilitate this, we have a program called Outlook Assistant.  You can download and install this program now, and it will point your Outlook program to the new system at the appropriate time.

This week, you will receive an email with a link to download Outlook Assistant.  When you do so, you may be asked to create a password.

IMPORTANT: This will change your password for the Office 365 Portal.  If you already know your Office 365 password and want to keep it, simply enter that password.  If you don't know your password or want to change it, this will give you the opportunity to reset it.  This password must have at least 8 characters, both upper and lower case letters, and numbers.  Please remember what your password is.  If we have to change it before the migration is complete, your Outlook conversion will not work properly.

Once you enter a password, simply download and run the executable.  Once this is installed, you will not see any changes.  The program will wait until we tell it to make the switch to Exchange, then it will simply point your program to the new mailbox at the appropriate time.

If you do not install Outlook Assistant, you will no longer receive new emails once we cut over to the new system.

Non-Outlook Users

If you have not yet started using Outlook, and still rely on a web browser to get your mail, you will need to start going to a new web site for your mail.  Rather than going to gmail.com, your mail will start coming to outlook.office365.com.

This will be a new interface that looks a little different, but it will continue to provide browser based access to send and receive mail.

If you go to that web site now, you can see that most of your mail is already there.  Do not be concerned if some mail is missing.  We are still migrating mail, and your mailbox may not be complete.

IMPORTANT: Do not start sending mail from the Office 365 portal before the migration is complete, and do not make any changes to the mail in the new portal.  If you do, you will mess up the migration.  Do not delete messages.  Do not move them into folders. Do not try to send messages from there.  Do not make any changes at all.  You cannot start using the portal until the migration is complete.

If you want to begin using Outlook for your mail, but have not done so already, at this point I would recommend waiting until we make the final conversion.  At that point, you can simply run your initial setup of Outlook and begin using it with Microsoft Exchange Online.

Everyone

There will be some work to do once the migration is complete.  We are migrating your mail, contacts, and calendar.  You may lose some settings.  If you have filters set up to deal with messages, you will need to recreate those in Exchange.  If you have shared calendars with others, you will need to re-share them.  If you are using third party tools like Cloud HQ to share mail folders, those tools will no longer work.

Your labels/folders will move over, but going forward, you can only assign a message to one folder. If you have messages with more than one label during migration, they will be duplicated with a copy in each folder.

The exact timing of the final conversion to the new system is dependent on when the migration is complete.  Once we are confident of when that will happen, we will let everyone know the exact date and time of the cut-over.

Once cut-over is complete, there may be a short time when you still have access to your Gmail account, even though it will no longer be receiving any new messages.  This will give you a chance to confirm for yourself that everything moved properly.  However, once the migration is complete, you should not attempt to send messages from Gmail, nor make any other changes in the old system.

We plan to bring over the contents of your Google Drive to your personal Box folder.  Anything else you may use in Google that is tied to your work account (e.g. photos, chats, blogs, sites, etc.) will be gone once we shut down our Google account.

Leaving Gmail for Exchange Online

The firm has decided to move the margolisedelstein.com mail domain from G Suite (Google) to Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online.  We will make this move quickly and expect the change to happen in the next few months.

Why this is happening

As the firm replaces a wide range of systems, several of our vendors say that their systems integrate better with Microsoft's solution rather than Google's.  It will also mean users will have a single account for both email and MS Office rather than the separate accounts that exist now.

The Process

We plan to use a migration specialist called Skykick.  The migration company will access your email and migrate all of your mail contacts, and calendar information into Exchange Online.   This process will take several weeks.  At some point around Labor Day, we plan to shut down Google, do a final sync, and begin using Office 365.  We will provide more detailed information on the cut-over as we get closer to the end of the process.

How to prepare

Google throttles the amount of data we can download from each mailbox every day.  Therefore, moving the data will take several weeks.  If you have a large amount of data in your mailbox, now would be an ideal time to begin deleting items you no longer need and which will only extend our migration process.

The new system has an email storage limit of 50 Gb, unlike Gmail's unlimited storage.  At present, just about everyone is well below that limit, which is just for email.  It does not count document storage you may be using in Google Drive.  But if you are getting close to that limit, you may want to be diligent about deleting messages that unnecessarily fill your account.

Beyond mail, you may be using your Google Account for other purposes.  You may have documents saved in Google Drive.  We expect to be able to migrate everything in your Google Drive to Box.  This is a good time for house cleaning though.  If you have files you no longer need in Google Drive, please delete them now.

If you have created documents or spreadsheets in Google Drive that are in Google format, we will convert them to Microsoft format.  In other words, a Google Doc will convert to a MS Word Doc, and a Google Sheet will convert to MS Excel.

If you have been using Google Hangouts for instant messaging and chat, those logs will not come over.  If you need to save any of that for some reason, you may want to cut and paste the information into a document.  Going forward, we recommend using Microsoft Teams for chat and IM.

If you have pictures saved in Google Photos in a work account, these also will be left behind.  If you have photos needed for work, please save copies into the appropriate matter directory.  If you have personal photos, you may want to download them to a personal computer before they disappear forever.

If you are using any other Google applications and are worried about losing information, please contact me to discuss further.  We will do everything in our power to protect whatever data you deem important.

We will also need to find new homes for the Research Home Page, and (hopefully) this blog.  We are working on alternative solutions and will announce them as soon as they are ready.

Change Now

Of course, switching to a new mail system means that the familiar Gmail web page will be going away, as will the Gmail app that you use on phones or tablets.  We will replace these with Microsoft Outlook.  If you have already installed Office 365 on your computer, you already have Outlook installed.  To become more familiar with it, we would like you to begin using it now.  You can connect Outlook to your existing Gmail account using the G Suite Sync tool.  If you click on the link, you can download and run the tool on your computer.  This will configure Outlook to access your Google account.

If you begin using Outlook now, you have time to familiarize yourself with the Interface, but can still also use a browser to access the old familiar way while you are learning Outlook.  Once we make the move to Exchange, the Gmail interface will go away and we will point your Outlook software to the new Exchange back end.  If you are familiar with Outlook by then, you will be ahead of the game and not really see any changes in the way you work with your mail.  You will also have the option to access your mail online through outlook.com.

Fax

I have been fighting fax machine problems the last few weeks.  It's really gotten me thinking about how we need to end faxing as we know it.

The fax is a rather old technology.  The basic technology was invented in 1843, even before the telephone.  It was able to send images across telegraph wires.  In 1964, Xerox began selling the first commercial fax machine that could work over the telephone.  It took time to catch on due to the high costs, but by 1980 faxes were becoming commonplace.

Consider that in 1980, few of us even had VCRs or CD players, let alone computers.  By technology standards, even the modern fax is ancient.  It transmits painfully slowly when compared to modern means of communication and mostly wastes paper.  There really is no good reason why we still use faxes today.

Today, most documents are already in electronic format.  Emailing them to someone is much faster, cheaper and more convenient.  Some insist that faxes are important because paper documents still need to be transmitted.  But there is no reason that on those few occasions, one cannot simply scan the document and email it that way.

Transmitting a fax takes minutes rather than seconds via email.  It often incurs long distance charges and often requires one or more dedicated phone lines.  There are additional equipment costs, compared with email which uses the same computer you use for everything else.  There are also confidentiality and more time lag issues since faxes are sent to a common location and then need to be distributed by hand.  Once received, an email attachment can by copied or redistributed easily by use of the forward function.  By contrast, a fax must be taken to a copier and redistributed by hand, or scanned into an image for further processing.

Faxes were great in their day, but that day is long passed.

That said, some of our clients still use faxes and we need to accommodate them.  Many years ago, I looked into some fax server options for the firm.  These involved giving everyone a separate fax line.  Incoming faxes could then be distributed automatically to the recipient via email or file transfer.  We rejected this option then because the machine itself would have cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, but we would also have to spend thousands more each month for the hundreds of fax lines needed for such a system.  Such an investment in a dying technology seemed foolish.

But because fax has lingered as a needed service.  I have begun looking at some other options.  One would be to get a single device located in our main office that could serve as the receiving point for faxes to any of our offices.  Rather than being printed, the faxes would be saved as PDF documents.  Someone at Reliable, or other designated staff, could sort through the faxes and email them as an attachment to the final recipient.

We would also have a desktop application that would allow you to send faxes as easily as printing a document.  Paper documents could be scanned as images and then sent through the fax application.

With such a system in place, we could do away with traditional fax machines entirely.

The Future of Email

Move from GroupWise to Gmail

For many years, the firm used Novell GroupWise for its email and calendaring system.  About two years ago, we switched to what is today called Google for Work as our email system.  In making this change, we lost some features, had to go through the difficulties associated with migrating all of our existing data to the new system, and had to relearn how to work with email the Google way.  Many have expressed to me their unhappiness with the change, so I thought I would spend today's post explaining why we made the change.

The change was not made lightly.  I have  had a personal Gmail account since early 2005, when the Gmail was still in beta testing.  I created a test domain with Google back 2008.  For several years, I judged Gmail not ready for the enterprise environment, but kept watching it improve.  We eventually created a test group that worked with the test system for many months and eventually made the decision in early 2013 to move the firm and its domain to manage Gmail.  The data and user migration itself took nearly a year to complete.

Reasons for the Change

There were many reasons for the change, including the following:

• Mobility: Gmail offers a much easier way to connect to iPhone and Android devices, as well as other access outside the office.  By removing the need for a client, you can check email on any computer with Internet access from anywhere in the world.  Although GroupWise had a web component, it was limited in its ability and difficult to use for many functions.
  
• Disaster Recovery: because Gmail is available from anywhere at any time, a disaster event that shuts down an office does not put us out of business.  We had two snow related events that caused an office to be shut down for several days while using GroupWise.  Attorneys could not access mail because the server containing their mailbox could nto get power.  Should such an event happen today, attorneys can still access email from home or a coffee shop without having to worry that the mail server is sitting in a powerless building.
  
• Better Mail Management: GroupWise tended to slow down the more mail you kept stored in your mailbox.  Gmail is designed so that even if you have tens of thousands of emails in your inbox, it does not get slowed down trying to sort and present them to you every time you open your account.
  
• Spam Filtering: Our spam filtering service went out of business in 2013.  A new service was going to cost as much per user as all of Gmail, which includes spam filtering.
  
• Server Proliferation: maintaining GroupWise required the maintenance of a mail server, a second server to connect phones to the mail system, a third server to handle web and internet interface issues, as well as space on six servers in various satellite offices.  Maintaining all that at a time when IT staff was shrinking was becoming too difficult.
  
• Remote Access Complaints: When using GroupWise remotely or from offices that did not have a local server, there were quite valid complaints about how slowly GroupWise operated.  By contrast, Gmail is designed to operate over low bandwidth Internet connections and works much better under such circumstances.
  
• Extra Features: In addition to mail, contacts and calendars, Google for Work offers a wide range of other features and add-ons, including Google Drive, video conferencing, instant chat, etc.  It also offers additional benefits behind the scenes benefits such as encrypted communications for clients who demand it, and management of cell phone devices to protect the security of email content.
  
• Elimination of several bugs: GroupWise had been giving us problems with corruption of archived mail, as well as issues related to addressing sent mail properly.  These are issues we were able to leave behind by moving to Google.
  
• Better Backup and Recovery: Use of Google Vault allows us to search for and recover any emails sent to or from the firm.  This makes tracking disputes over whether an email was sent much easier.  It also allows us to find content a user might have accidentally deleted but now needs.

Despite the difficulty of any transition and despite the loss of a few features we may have like in GroupWise, I think the switch was a major improvement for the firm.

Alternative Solutions:

Some have asked why the firm did not switch to a Microsoft Exchange system.  For me, this would have been worse choice than staying with GroupWise.  The problems of server proliferation and staff time spent fixing data problems or hardware and software glitches would have become worse.  Exchange would not only be more expensive and time consuming to run, but would probably result in increased down time.  It would increased IT staffing needs, resulting in increased costs.  Also, because Exchange must be updated every few years, the costs and inconveniences of upgrade would have made things worse.

Another option would have been to have a hosted Exchange server.  This essentially would shift the hassles of running the exchange server to a third party.  We looked at this option.  In addition to being more expensive, we would be reliant on the quality of services of whomever was managing our server.  Service and support might not live up to promises.  We also found greatly increased costs for various options that might need to be added later, such as encryption for clients would add extra costs.

A third alternative would have been to go with a competing cloud solution, such as Microsoft Office 365.  Microsoft did not start this service until mid-2011, after we were well into testing Google.  In its infancy, Microsoft had a great many bugs to work out.  It also offered few extras and was charging a great deal more and offering less features.  In addition, the web client was rather weak and limited, and using a new mail client would reduce our ability to access mail from outside the office and create additional expenses.  Google's solution made much more sense.

There were a number of other mail services that we considered.  But I was attracted to the security of having a large established multinational corporation that that could back up its data all over the world, and unlikely to go bankrupt to be a strong selling point for Google over many smaller companies offering similar services. 

Using a New Interface.

Of course, no solution is perfect, and I know people have complaints about Gmail.  One of the most commonly expressed is frustration with the user interface, i.e. the web page that shows the inbox.  Many people more familiar with other mail clients have found it difficult to get used to this.  

For a time, we considered adding a mail client to work with Gmail.  We tested Mozilla Thunderbird extensively, but were not satisfied with how it worked and decided not to send to a test group.

We are still evaluating whether to use MS Outlook as a mail client that can connect to Gmail.  This will give users the ability to do their mail in Outlook without having to use the Gmail web interface.

I have concerns about this option, not the least of which is that it is another point of failure.  It is another program that the help desk would need to learn and support.  There is the cost of getting Outlook for many users not using MS Office.  There are configuration issues related to keeping Outlook in sync with Gmail.  There will inevitably be difficulties with users who use Outlook sometimes and the web interface other times, with different features available depending on how it is accessed.  Obviously, Outlook would not be available on every device you might access your mail account, meaning there would inevitably be some back and forth.  I also don't put it past Microsoft to create bugs when connecting Outlook to Gmail, or eventually cutting off Google's ability to use its patented ActiveSync technology in order to force users to drop Gmail for Microsoft's solution.

These concerns aside, we have been evaluating Outlook as an option and have been testing its benefits and limits.

Gmail Will Remain for the Foreseeable Future

Some have asked if we might switch our Email to Office 365 or another provider.  I am still convinced that Gmail provides the best option for the firm.  Even if I were to be convinced there is something better, it would take several years to plan and execute a conversion of all of our data.  I am unlikely to put the firm through such a disruptive event again unless there was a marked benefit to the change.  At present, I do not see that with any other service or system.

What are your thoughts?

I have  tried to express my view in this article.  But you the users have a say in where we may move in the future.  If there are good reasons to change, we are always open to looking at other solutions.  You can make your opinions known by taking the poll below.  Click on the link below to take the firm's poll on email systems:

Take the Poll

See the Results

The results will update as more people take the poll, so feel free to check back.