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Listed below are comments made by Proofpoint between Friday, 17th July 2009 and Friday, 17th July 2009.

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The Twitter hack and the cloud 12:38pm on 17 Jul 2009 This is not really about the innate security or insecurity of cloud computing, it's about password security. This hack can happen to any enterprise that makes web-based email available.

Organisations must enforce strong password policy and force their employees to make regular password changes on email accounts.

Employees often demand web-based access to email, and web-based access to email greatly increases the utility of corporate email, but proper security policies should be in place to minimise the risks.

Enterprises should enforce strong password policies as well as regular password changes. Im not sure if the enterprise version of Google Apps has such a feature to enforce such policies, but it should.

For extra security, webmail can be protected by two-factor authentication (e.g. not just a password, but also a USB token or similar). Many enterprises already do this, though many do not.

Email continues to be the de-facto filing and file transfer system in the enterprise. Its nearly impossible to change this behaviour, but as the Twitter hack shows; a massive amount of confidential information resides in the email system. Adopting a solution for secure file transfer to send files that are large, or contain confidential information and encouraging employees to use it, can help solve this problem.

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