It seems that in the world of modern IT, you can’t swing a cat-6 cable without hitting four or five cloud-based platforms that are trying to revolutionise business communication. Despite the rise of platforms like Slack, Teams, Zoom and more, however, emails remain by far the most widely-used method of professional communication.

In this week’s episode, we take a look at why this comparatively ancient technology still persists so widely, as well as the advantages that it offers over newer platforms, and what inspiration they can take from it.

Highlights

“What it comes down to for me is - and I've been thinking about this, because I hate email, and I want it to die - but I think it serves a very important purpose in the sense that it's a medium where a lot of people who are going to try to communicate with me only live there; they're not bleeding into places like WhatsApp or whatever platform you might choose to speak to your contacts and so on. It's a very useful way of keeping people at arm's length, to some extent.”

“I think the key difference between email and these newer collaboration platforms for me, is that email was developed back in the 70s and 80s. And it was developed by researchers and academics as an open standard, that people then built proprietary clients on top of. It wasn't built as a walled garden enclosure where you had to be on one specific platform in order to use it. And I think that's why it's persisted so much; that openness means that it doesn't matter what email client you're using. If email was developed today, if I was on Gmail, I probably wouldn't be able to email someone that was using Outlook.”

“I would really like to receive any PR message or business offer by sitting on my front porch with some iced tea and someone rolling up on a horse and handing me a handwritten letter pitching whatever interview they want. This is how I imagine it would be in a perfect world.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• In the end, email might actually kill off Slack
• Managing the oversaturation of workplace platforms
• Microsoft declares Slack isn't secure enough for its workers
• Slack plots 'enterprise-grade' security updates for Slack Connect
• Email is killing productivity, new research finds
• Zoom settles $85 million lawsuit over 'zoombombing', privacy policies
• The dangers of nighttime Slacking
• Working from home has created an "overtime epidemic"
• The IT Pro Podcast: Everyone needs Kubernetes certs
• The metaverse is a waste of time, effort and processing power
• How to give your business a voice
• Four ways the cloud facilitates workplace collaboration
• A new age of collaboration tools
• The social impact of remote collaboration
• Google and Microsoft's hybrid work battle shows the narrative is just as important as the technology
• IT Pro Panel: Why collaboration platforms are so hard to deploy
• How CIOs can build effective cross-business collaboration

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Hackers impersonating cyber security company Proofpoint have launched a new phishing campaign targeting victims’ Microsoft and Google email credentials.

Researchers at Armorblox discovered emails claiming to contain a secure file sent via Proofpoint as a link. The problem was spotted at an unnamed global communications company with around 1,000 mailboxes at risk from the scam.

“Clicking the link took victims to a splash page that spoofed Proofpoint branding and contained login links for different email providers. The attack included dedicated login page spoofs for Microsoft and Google,” said researchers.

The email’s subject line was “RE: Payoff Request” and claimed to contain a mortgage-related file sent via Proofpoint along with an email footer exhorting the importance of confidentiality. Researchers said that adding “RE” to the email title is a tactic we have observed scammers using before — this signifies an ongoing conversation and might make victims click the email faster.

After clicking the pretend “secure” email link in the email, victims would then see a web page with the Proofpoint logo and spoofed login buttons for Google, Outlook, and Office 365.

“Clicking on the Google and Office 365 buttons led to dedicated spoofed login flows for Google and Microsoft, respectively. Both flows asked for the victim’s email address and password,” said researchers.

These pages were hosted the “greenleafproperties[.]co[.]uk” parent domain. The domain’s WhoIs record shows it was last updated in April 2021, according to researchers. They added the URL currently redirects to “cvgproperties[.]co[.]uk”.

“The barebones website with questionable marketing increases the possibility that this is a dummy site,” researchers said.

According to researchers, phishing emails replicate existing workflows within organizations. “When we see emails, we’ve already seen before, our brains tend to employ System 1 thinking and take quick action,” they added.

The email managed to get past Microsoft email security, according to researchers. “This email had a Spam Confidence Level (SCL) score of 1, which means Microsoft determined the email was not spam,” said researchers.

Researchers recommended users subject any email to an eye test that includes inspecting the sender's name and email address, the language within the email, and any logical inconsistencies. They also recommended organizations deploy multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all business and personal accounts.

Cloudflare has announced its foray into the email security industry with two new offerings.

New email capabilities, available for free, will help customers create custom email addresses, manage incoming email routing, and prevent phishing attacks on outgoing emails.

Designed to enhance email management, Cloudflare Email Routing lets businesses set up custom domain email addresses that automatically forward mail to users’ preferred mailboxes (Gmail or Outlook).

The professional addressing capability is of particular importance for small businesses seeking custom domains for their email addresses while retaining the familiar Gmail interface.

Cloudflare’s second offering, Email Security DNS Wizard, protects businesses from phishing and spoofing attacks. Besides assisting website owners with creating DNS records, Cloudflare’s DNS Wizard displays warnings and recommendations that alert users to security threats.

Customers can configure Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) with a single click to prevent bad actors from forging emails from unsuspecting users.

Cloudflare also announced the launch of its Advanced Email Security Suite. Fully integrated with Cloudflare’s Zero Trust solutions, the new suite enables comprehensive email scanning for security risks and complements spam protection capabilities of any email hosting provider.

“Customers have asked us to address email security for years. Today we’re announcing new tools that will help close the biggest remaining network security risk that Cloudflare hasn’t already covered, until now,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare.

“We want to be the network that businesses of any size can plug into for all of their needs. While today marks our first step into this space, we ultimately hope to become the leader in email security.”

Microsoft Outlook is susceptible to phishing attacks using internationalized domain names (IDNs), according to reports from two separate security researchers.

Phishing attacks sent from IDNs are also known as homograph attacks. They use Unicode characters from non-Latin character sets, such as Cyrillic or Greek, that look like regular Latin characters. An attacker might register the domain tωitter.com, which uses an international alternative to a regular 'w'.

Browsers have long recognized and flagged IDNs, displaying them in their original Unicode format (known as Punycode), making them easier to spot. The tωitter.com IDN would show up as xn–titter-i2e.com, for example.

However, researcher dobby1kenobi revealed that Microsoft Outlook does not highlight them. Moreover, if a spoofed email using an IDN resembles a legitimate email address in the recipient's Outlook contact book - for example, real.person@tωitter.com instead of real.person@twitter.com - the software will display the legitimate person's contact details next to the phishing email.

For the attack to work, the sender must include the real email address in the 'Sender' field, which is trivial.

"This means if a company’s domain is “somecompany[.]com”, an attacker that registers an IDN such as “ѕomecompany[.]com” (xn–omecompany-l2i[.]com) could take advantage of this bug and send convincing phishing emails to employees within “somecompany.com” that used Microsoft Outlook for Windows," he reported.

Because a spoofed email address would cause the real employee's contact details to appear, many employees might be fooled into thinking the email was legitimate.

Mike Manzotti, senior consultant at security company Dionach, also noted the issue. He reported the same response from Microsoft as dobby1kenobi:

"We’ve finished going over your case, but in this instance it was decided that we will not be fixing this vulnerability in the current version and are closing this case," the company said. "In this case, while spoofing could occur, the senders identity cannot be trusted without a digital signature. The changes needed are likely to cause false positives and issues in other ways."

However, Manzotti noticed that the latest version of Microsoft Outlook (16.0.14228.20216) is no longer vulnerable. Microsoft was unable to confirm if it had issued a fix, he said.

Companies with versions of Outlook still susceptible to this flaw can work around the issue by digitally signing their emails and visually classifying all mails from external sources, dobby1kenobi said.

Search engine company DuckDuckGo expanded its service offerings this week with a privacy-focused email system.

Launched in beta today, DuckDuckGo Email Protection gives users an email address they can use to register for sites they suspect will track them via email.

Some companies embed tracking codes in emails that they can then use to monitor user behaviors, such as when and where they open the mails and what links they click on.

Clicking on links in tracked emails can send information, including your email address, to dozens of companies that can then combine this with other information they already have about you, enabling them to build up a detailed profile of your activity. Citing a Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy report, DuckDuckGo said seven in ten emails carry tracking codes.

DuckDuckGo users can generate a proxy email address with an @duck.com domain when registering for online services. DucDuckGo then intercepts any emails sent to that address and strips away tracking codes before forwarding them to the user.

Users can generate and deactivate multiple new email addresses using the DuckDuckGo app, enabling them to use multiple addresses for different classes of service or disposable ones for individual online services. DuckDuckGo promises not to keep the emails it processes.

Concerns over email security and privacy have prompted several market offerings in this space. DuckDuckGo's email privacy service follows a move by Apple to cement itself as an email privacy service. The smartphone giant announced its own proxy email service at its 2019 World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).

Unveiled as part of its “Sign in with Apple” service, it enables people to register for new online services using a random email address Apple creates and manages for you. The company required developers for its platforms to support the service in their code.

At WWDC 2021, Apple announced it would embed the private email relay service natively in its Mail app as a part of the iOS and iPadOC version 15 updates. It will also include an email protection tab that strips out tracking pixels and masks the recipient's IP address.

DuckDuckGo highlights the ease of use as the main benefit of this service, arguing that users don't have to change email providers or email clients, unlike other email privacy solutions.

The DuckDuckGo Email Protection Service is currently available on a waitlist basis. You can join the list using the company's mobile app for iOS or Android.

Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI), a standard for visually proving an email’s legitimacy, got a boost today with the launch of a new automation tool from email security company Valimail and official support from Google.

Launched as a formal specification in 2019, BIMI is a standard that lets companies define what marketing image is displayed next to emails sent from their servers. This image, which the BIMI working group calls a “brand assertation,” serves as visual proof that the message is authentic.

BIMI uses DNS records to define the image, and it also relies on the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Performance (DMARC) standard, which helps protect against phishing. This, in turn, relies on two other technologies: Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM).

DMARC and its underlying technologies help to prevent email spoofing, in which phishing attackers fake a sender’s domain in an email’s “From:” field. DMARC enables administrators to publish their policy for authenticating and rejecting emails.

When a DMARC-supporting email server receives an email, it uses DNS to look up the DMARC record for the alleged sender's domain. It then checks the mail's DKIM digital certificate to ensure it matches the alleged sender's DKIM certificate. It also verifies the message came from IP addresses listed in the SPF record.

While not a security solution, BIMI uses these technologies to verify the image attached to an email is really from the sender.

An incoming email server uses DMARC to authenticate the message. If the email passes the DMARC authentication, the email server uses DNS to retrieve the sender's BIMI image. The BIMI image then shows up next to the company's name in emails.

Boosting its legitimacy, BIMI also got official support from Google following a year-long pilot project. The company will now officially support BIMI in Gmail, according to the AuthIndicators Working Group, which manages the BIMI effort.

This official acceptance by Google means for an organization's logo to be eligible for display in Gmail, a brand must obtain a BIMI certificate confirming its right to use the image. These certificates are tied to registered trademarks from select jurisdictions.

Several other companies also support BIMI in pilot mode, including Yahoo!, AOL, Netscape, and Fastmail. Comcast was also planning BIMI support as of last October. Microsoft, however, still has not signed on to the program.

To help streamline this process, email security company Valimail, which claims to have “founded, named, and resourced the BIMI standard,” announced Amplify, a tool that automates BIMI support. With Amplify’s release, Valimain looks to make BIMI the baseline for all email security.

Along with the new product, Valimail debuted partnerships with certificate providers DigiCert and Entrust to develop BIMI further and create a straightforward process for companies to enforce DMARC and Verified Mark Certificate (VMC).

When compared to more modern video conferencing and collaboration platforms such as Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, email can easily be dismissed as outdated and inconvenient. Nevertheless, it’s still considered the most commonly-used form of business communication, especially when contacting individuals from outside of your organisation. After all, it requires minimal internet connection and, as opposed to the immediacy of video calls, email etiquette allows users to open messages whenever it’s most convenient to them, leading to a better work-life balance.

However, as one of the more traditional systems of communication that hasn’t changed much over the past decade, email is also the perfect target for cyber criminals looking to gain easy access to an organisation’s data.

Despite plenty of email providers rolling out extra security features such as CAPTCHA verification tests, hackers always come prepared. In a recent case, attackers were spotted sending out phishing emails attached as HTML files that looked clean to a secure email gateway. When a victim opens the HTML file containing a CAPTCHA and solves it, the browser will then show them a phishing page asking them to enter their credentials.

In a cyber landscape where no one can feel truly safe, there are ways to mitigate the threat of having your email account compromised by threat actors. This includes selecting an email service provider that comes equipped with additional security features designed to prevent hackers from gaining access to your inbox. In this guide, we compare communication offerings based on price, storage, and features, allowing you to choose the best secure email service for your business.

What to look for in a secure email service

Whether you’re a home user or work for a large corporation, it’s good to know what security features your email service has. Below, you’ll find some features you should look for in secure email service and how they may benefit you.

End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption disguises data in order to prevent it from being read or changed, and sending an email over this secure communication system means only the device it’s sent to can decrypt it, with the use of a private decryption key.

This method is considered one of the safest because it prevents third parties from being able to access the secure file while it’s being transferred within the end-to-end system.

PGP encryption

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is seen as a fairly standard encryption service, but it’s extremely difficult to hack. This is a key reason why this email security tool is still used today, using a combination of data compression, private-key and public-key cryptography, since its conception in 1991.

The way it works is that each user of this system has an encryption key that is known publicly; this changes the contents of a secure text file or email into a complex code of characters. This code is then sent to the recipient who uses their private PGP encryption key to turn the characters back into a readable message.

Without access to the public and private encryption keys, others won’t be able to read the contents.

Two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, is a protective feature that means that in order to read a secure message or email, the recipient needs a password or code that’s sent to them to decrypt it; this can either be by text message or an authenticator app on your phone.

With this method, businesses can enable their employees to access messages from wherever they are, and decrease the chances for hackers to gain access without the authentication passwords.

Server location

An email server’s location has a bearing on how secure it is. Countries like the US and UK share intelligence data about citizens, and this data can be collected from servers based in those countries.

Other countries — Germany and Switzerland, for example — have tougher privacy laws, so many secure email services are based there to prevent snooping.

What secure email services are available?

There are plenty of secure email services available. Here are six of the most secure options.

ProtonMail

URL: www.protonmail.com

Price: From £0 up to £6.83 (€8.00 / $9.45) per user per month

Storage: 500MB - 20GB

One of the world’s largest secure email services, ProtonMail offers end-to-end encryption and a raft of other security features, such as encryption via secure implementations of AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), RSA, and OpenPGP.

You can also send end-to-end encrypted emails to non-ProtonMail users by sending the recipient a link that displays the encrypted message on their browser. You can then share a passphrase with the recipient to decrypt the message.

The company says it can’t read any emails it hosts because the data is encrypted so it’s inaccessible to the provider. The provider can’t decrypt the data either, so it can’t hand it over to third parties.

Plus, it’s based in Switzerland, which has some of the world’s strictest privacy laws. It also has a no-logs policy and offers self-destructing emails.

Tutanota

URL: www.tutanota.com

Price: From £0 to £4.10 (€4.80 / $5.67) per user per month

Included storage: 1GB - 10GB

Paid storage: Up to 1TB at £51.24 (€60.00 / $70.89) per month

This Germany-based secure email service provider offers a GDPR-compliant email service with built-in encryption and a secure calendar that allows no one but you to see your appointments. It also has desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux and mobile apps for iOS and Android.

It uses AES-128 symmetric encryption or RSA-2048 asymmetric encryption, depending on the email recipient. The service also obfuscates email subject lines and attachment names.

Other security features include end-to-end encrypted mailbox, end-to-end encrypted address book, automatic end-to-end encrypted emails between users, end-to-end encrypted emails to any email address via a password.

It also has a secure password reset that gives the company no access at all. Users can execute a full-text search of encrypted data locally. There is also TLS with support for PFS, DMARC, DKIM, DNSSEC, MTA-STS.

MailFence

URL: www.mailfence.com/en/

Price: From £0 to £21.35 (€25 / $29.54) per month

Storage: 500MB - 50GB

MailFence is encrypted with a secure, open-source implementation of OpenPGP and offers cloud-based calendar, contact, and document tools. Existing PGP users can also import and manage their keypairs in the app.

It offers end-to-end encryption and digital signatures with data stored on Belgian servers. Customers can send encrypted messages to users who don’t use PGP. It also offers SSL/TLS, Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), MTA-STS, and HSTS for protecting your data while in motion.

This Belgium-based secure email service donates 15% of the Pro and Ultra plans revenues to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the European Digital Rights Foundation.

Hushmail

URL: www.hushmail.com

Price: £36.13 (€42.30 / $49.98) [personal account per year]; £4.33 (€5.07 / $5.99) per user per month [small businesses]; £7.22 - £28.19 (€8.46 - €33.01 / $9.99 - $39.00 per month [health care]; (€8.46 / $9.99) per month [law]; and £2.88 (€3.38 / $3.99) per user per month [non-profits]

Storage: 10GB (personal, small business, law); 10-15GB per user (health care); and 10GB per user (non-profits)

Hushmail offers end-to-end encryption using open-source OpenPGP, but subject lines are unencrypted. User passwords are also hashed, and Hushmail uses a zero-knowledge model. Plus, the company can’t decrypt emails without a password.

However, if the provider gets an enforceable order under British Columbia law, they’ll have to reveal data in an unencrypted format.

Mailbox.org

URL: www.mailbox.org/en/

Price: £0.85 (€1.00 / $1.18) per month to £7.69 (€9.00 / $10.63) per user per month

Storage: 2 GB- 25GB (50GB cloud storage)

Mailbox.org is a Germany-based secure email provider and is compatible with mobile devices and third-party clients. Mailbox.org also offers cloud storage and secure video conferencing features.

The service allows users to register anonymously without having to enter any personal details. SSL/TLS encryption protects data transmission, and it uses full PGP encryption. Users can choose to prevent sending mail to recipients without secure mailboxes.

The provider also uses (EC)DHE algorithms for Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), which prevents any possible decryption of recorded data traffic in the future. Mailbox.org secures its domain with DNSSEC and DANE/TLSA and uses HSTS, CAA, CSP, MTA-STS, and X-XSS to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks (MitM).

Posteo

URL: www.posteo.de/en

Price: £0.85 (€1 / $1.18) per month

Storage: 2GB

Paid storage: £0.21 (€0.25 / $0.30) per month per additional GB (up to 20GB)

Posteo works on any device to enable cross-platform synchronization and includes spam and anti-virus filters. Plus, it strips identifying IP addresses from all emails. Users can sign up for and pay for the service anonymously. The firm is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, where it has been running since 2009.

Posteo also uses TLS with Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), DANE/TLSA, HTTP Strict Transport Security HSTS, SSH

Its servers’ hard disks are AES encrypted to prohibit data theft and unauthorized access and are in a highly secure German data center. There is also optional on-server email encryption with RSA, AES, HMAC, and bcrypt hashing.

Emails sent using Posteo’s webmail interface contain neither a user's local nor public IP address. Users can secure Posteo accounts with two-factor authentication and set it up on all devices with free apps.

CloudHQ has released an upgraded version of its Chrome-based web application that enables users to export important Gmail conversations to Google Sheets.

Dubbed “Export Email to Google Sheets,” the app is fully integrated with Gmail and G-suite, eliminating the need for physical storage devices to save data.

"Copying the information in emails from Gmail to Sheets gives small businesses the power to sort, analyze, and prepare email data in ways that simply wasn't possible before," said Naomi Assaraf, co-founder and chief marketing officer, cloudHQ.

Using the email parser feature in Export Email to Google Sheets, businesses can dissect invoices, signup or interest emails, order notifications, email campaign reports, and more for rapid integration with data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

Users can also create custom parsing rules to extract target keywords or leverage spreadsheets to filter and organize exported data by standard Gmail nomenclature, including Cc and Bcc. When used to extract and save all text from an email into a single PDF document, Export Email to Google Sheets makes for easy and error-free translation and sharing via a PDF attachment or Google Drive instead of forwarding an email dozens of times.

You can also track bounced and bad emails imported to spreadsheets using a Gmail label for re-examining. You can also link order and delivery tracking emails to supply chain management tools for greater visibility and improved operational efficiency.

"If your business receives a specific type of email all the time, and you use Gmail as your email provider, Export Gmail to Google Sheets is a powerful tool you can use to automate and improve how you respond to those emails," Assaraf said.

Export Gmail to Google Sheets comes with basic and premium plans. The basic plan offers support for 50 parsed emails per month, while the Premium Plan is unlimited.

Many security strategies rely on pattern recognition - setting a benchmark for what normal operations look like, and then tracking any anomalies which could represent potential threats. But what do you do when ‘normal’ is suddenly very abnormal? Coronavirus has introduced huge disruptions to standard operating procedures, and security teams must quickly adapt to cope with them. In this Q&A, we talk to Darktrace director Mariana Pereira about the changing situation, and how business can make sure they’re not caught out.

Carly Page

News editor, IT Pro

Carly Page is an experienced journalist with more than a decade of experience covering the technology industry. Previously editor of UK tech tabloid The INQUIRER, Carly went freelance in 2020 and has written for a number of publications including Computer Shopper, Forbes, IT Pro, the Metro and Tes.

Mariana Pereira

Director of email security products, Darktrace

Mariana is the Director of Email Security Products at Darktrace, with a primary focus on the capabilities of AI cyber defenses against email-borne attacks. Mariana works closely with the development, analyst, and marketing teams to advise technical and non-technical audiences on how best to augment cyber resilience within the email domain, and how to implement AI technology as a means of defense. She speaks regularly at international events, with a specialism in presenting on sophisticated, AI-powered email attacks. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, and speaks several languages including French, Italian, and Portuguese.

We’ve all experienced that sinking feeling after accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient. If it’s an internal message, you may still be able to recall it – but if it’s gone to someone outside of your company there may be nothing you can do. At best, it’s an embarrassment; at worst, if your message contained confidential or personal information, you could be looking at a hefty fine.

SafeSend Email Security is a small add-in for Outlook that’s designed to eliminate that risk. It achieves this partly by requiring users to review all external email recipients and confirm that they’re correct before the message can be released.

There’s a lot more than this to the software, however. It also provides extensive data loss prevention (DLP) services, allowing you to scan email subjects, message contents and attachments for specific keywords and patterns. If a match is found, the software can request confirmation before sending or even block transmission altogether.

Deployment is a cinch. The add-in can either be installed manually or distributed and managed centrally using a group policy. It works with all versions of Outlook from 2007 upwards, and there’s also a web version for Outlook 365 and OWA. We had no problems using a GPO to distribute the MSI package to the Windows clients in our lab: once they had logged into the domain and been authenticated, the add-in was silently deployed without the need for any user interaction.

Training requirements are minimal. Users just need to be advised that the first time they load Outlook, SafeSend will pop up a message to confirm their internal email domain. Once this is done, any attempt to send a message outside of the organisation will bring up a confirmation prompt.

That might sound a little intrusive, but the dialog is clean and simple, showing all the email’s recipients (including those in the “Cc:” field) with a tickbox next to each one. If something’s not right, you can remove any unwanted recipients before sending, or reopen the message for further editing.

Central management is just as easy. SafeSend provides ADMX/ADML files for deployment on your domain controller; with these copied across to the PolicyDefinations folder on our Active Directory server, we were able to create a customised SafeSend GPO for all authenticated users.

This process can be a little time-consuming, but that’s only because the SafeSend GPO has over 150 options to configure. Some of these are simple controls, such as preventing users from removing SafeSend, adding extra safe domains and deciding whether to enable the “Select All” tickbox. More advanced options let you do things such as limiting the number of message recipients, detecting bulk emails and adding custom footer messages.

In addition, you can, of course, customise SafeSend’s DLP policies. These are extremely versatile as you can create multiple rules to detect specific strings, credit card numbers and even regular expressions. To ensure nothing slips through the net, SafeSend scans not only the text of outgoing emails but also attachments in various formats, including PDFs, Office attachments and ZIP archives.

If a user’s email triggers one of your DLP rules, they’ll be presented with details of the sensitive content and the detection rules that it triggered. You can set a custom action for each rule, so for some types of data you could require explicit confirmation from the sender, while other content might be completely blocked.

SafeSend also gives you the option of adding X-headers to emails. These can be used to trigger encryption using a separate security product such as Mimecast and Proofpoint – or you can use X-headers in conjunction with Exchange transport rules to verify that users have SafeSend installed.

We found SafeSend simple to roll out and refreshingly easy to manage. In these days when an accidental data breach can expose you to steep fines, every SMB ought to be concerned about email security – and this add-in is a great solution.

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a highly-secure method of encrypting text-based data used by businesses and organisations all over the globe. It combines different cryptographic protocols such as hashing, data compression, symmetric and asymmetric key cryptography to provide users with a fast and easy method of secure communication.

Each user has a 'private key' and a 'public key' and the interaction between the two forms the basis of the method's security. Private keys remain with the user only, forming the only part of the system that can verify a user's true identity. If anyone else has access to a private key, they can decrypt any communication intended to the rightful holder, rendering the communication channel compromised.

You can think of public keys as telephone numbers, something you can freely give out so people know how to contact you. When encrypting a message, a user must do so with the intended recipient's public key, like calling the right phone to reach the right person. You can think of the private key as the phone's password, only the person with the password can answer the phone.

Because the public key is linked to the recipient's private key, only that user can decrypt the message. You encrypt with the public key to ensure it gets to the right person and decrypt with a private key so only the right person can see it.

Pretty Good Privacy was developed by computer scientist Phil Zimmerman in 1991, who wanted to create an open source encryption platform that could be used by anyone across the world, without having to pay huge fees.

It's now owned by security giant Symantec Group, and it is the antivirus developer that now is responsible for updating PGP to ensure it's sufficient to protect email communications. The company has also developed an open source variant - OpenPGP, which is used alongside the licensed version.

What is PGP used for?

Although PGP was initially built to encrypt emails, this technology can be used to safeguard a range of communications from text messages to files. PGP can be applied in many ways, including boosting privacy as well as securing digital certificates.

There are a number of different standards in use, but the most widely-adopted is OpenPGP, an open-source iteration that bypasses the licence arrangements tied to PGP.

It’s predominately used to secure desktop apps and email clients such as Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. Google Chrome also offers extensions that allow users to apply the standard to web browsing.

How does PGP work?

This security tool works by adding layers of encryption onto text-based content to safeguard the content, and raise the level of privacy.

PGP relies on strong cryptography that renders encrypted text impossible to decipher without the requisite tool, or key. When applied to email clients, for example, the message content is protected through the use of an encoding algorithm that garbles the text so it’d be impossible to read if intercepted by a third-party.

Anybody hoping to read the text would need the key to unlock the code, but the key itself is often encrypted as well. Both are sent to the recipient of the message, so it can be read as normal once opened. The key and message are deciphered through the recipient’s email application, through the use of a private key, almost instantly once it’s sent.

Is PGP secure?

There has been some controversy over how secure PGP is. In 2011, researchers discovered that short encryption keys (32-bit or smaller) were unsafe to the extent some claimed they in effect offered no security at all.

This is because, with modern GPUs, it's easy for hackers to come up with a "colliding" (i.e. matching) key ID if the key in question is short. This doesn't mean PGP is fatally flawed, though - it just means a long key (greater than 32-bit) must always be used. If it is, then PGP works as intended and is secure - for now at least.

Most recently, hackers have discovered a hugely significant flaw in OpenPGP, the open-source variant of Symantec's licensed version. The flaw has been known to developers for over a decade and it could mean the end for the technology, according to those who built it. Hackers have found a way to flood keys with a huge amount of unnecessary data which will break the program (GnuPG) needed to use the technology.

"This is a mess, and it's a mess a long time coming," said Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a lead developer of OpenPGP. "The parts of the OpenPGP ecosystem that rely on the naive assumptions of the SKS keyserver can no longer be relied on, because people are deliberately abusing those keyservers. We need significantly more defensive programming, and a better set of protocols for thinking about how and when to retrieve OpenPGP certificates."

Nevertheless, the licensed version of PGP is still a secure method of communications that you can rely on to deliver sensitive information to individuals without having to worry about it being read if it were intercepted.

Knowing how to recover deleted emails in Gmail can be a handy skill to avoid overlooking important correspondence and ensure your communications are up-to-date. 

Deleting emails accidentally or in the heat of the moment is common, and we’ve all been there. When dealing with a wave of emails each day, accidentally hitting the wrong button and deleting something is easily done. But don’t worry, it’s possible to recover these deleted emails. 

Gmail has built-in mechanisms to prevent you from losing data, and these tools can also help you to recover emails that you've deleted on purpose but then need to retrieve at a later date.

However, It should be noted that these safety mechanisms aren't foolproof, and you won't be able to retrieve every email in Gmail. It's good practice to ensure that you make a note of any important information outside of your email inbox, just in case anything happens to it. 

That said, understanding how to recover deleted emails in Gmail is an essential tool for any worker.

This guide outlines how you can recover any deleted correspondence, but specifically in Gmail. We also have a guide on how to recover deleted emails in Outlook if you are experiencing a similar situation on that service. 

How to recover deleted emails in Gmail

It can be fairly easy to accidentally delete an email, or delete something you later realise is important, and Google understands this. Gmail, like many other email platforms, is designed in a way that when the delete button is used, the message is moved to another folder, rather than being removed outright. 

This folder, known as Trash or Bin depending on your region, allows you to review and recover deleted emails as necessary. However, by default, Gmail will only hold these deleted messages for 30 days, after which time the content is lost forever.

There are some exceptions to this rule. Those organizations using Google Vault can implement policies that allow users to recover deleted emails in Gmail that are older than 25 days, provided it meets specific retention rules. 

It's also possible for Admins to recover permanently deleted data - i.e. emails that have been deleted from the Trash or Bin folder - up to 25 days after the date of deletion. This should be seen as a last resort, as once the data becomes older than 25 days, it is truly lost forever.

Note: If you happen to have permanently deleted your email from the Trash, or 30 days have elapsed since you deleted it then you'll have to dig a little deeper. This is because Gmail automatically clears emails from the Trash 30 days after they were placed there. 

Learning how to restore Outlook emails is a handy skill that could help avoid disaster for you or your organization. 

If email is a large part of your daily work, accidentally deleting an email could leave you scrambling to locate vital business correspondence. 

Luckily, Outlook provides a fairly straightforward method for you to restore deleted emails, albeit with slightly different menus and processes depending on the specific version of the email application you currently use. 

One of many email services available on the market, Outlook is one of the most widely-used by professionals and businesses, mostly because it forms part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. 

This ecosystem includes a number of useful productivity and communications apps such as Microsoft Teams. 

So, if you’ve haphazardly deleted some correspondence, this guide will run you through all the steps that will help you rectify that mistake. 

How to restore Outlook emails: Getting started

Given there are a variety of Outlook versions, and that the steps for recovering deleted emails differ slightly. 

We've detailed each of the main versions and platforms below. We will be covering:

• Outlook.com
• Outlook on the Web App (OWA)
• Outlook 2016 and 2013
• Outlook 2010

The White House has undertaken an official internal investigation following revelations that top aides, including the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner, used personal email accounts to conduct official business.

White House officials, led by the White House counsel's office have begun looking at batches of emails stored on the White House server going to and from top advisors' private accounts, four officials familiar with the matter told Politico.

One of the sources, according to Politico, stated that the White House would be analysing the messages to determine if the undisclosed emails related to the investigations into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia, as well as any confidential government secrets.

To add further embarrassment, Kushner's lawyer Abbe Lowell accidentally forwarded an email from the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee to notorious email prankster Sinon_Reborn (recently revealed by Wired to be UK web designer James Linton), marking the second time that Lowell has been duped by Linton.

The email, sent from chairman Richard Burr and vice-chairman Mark R. Warner, sharply reminded Kushner that the Committee had requested him to retain and provide all relevant communications pertaining to the Russia investigation.

"The Committee was concerned to learn of this additional email account from the news media, rather than from you, in your closed staff interview," the email read. "Please confirm that the document production that you made to the Committee... included the additional 'personal email account' described to the news media."

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters yesterday: "The White House has been clear and instructs all staff to fully comply with presidential records acts. All staff has been briefed on the need to preserve those records, and we'll continue to do so."

26/09/2017: Committee wants more evidence of White House private emails

Five high level White House aides have been accused of using private email accounts to conduct official government business, in addition to President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Key advisors including Stephen Miller and Gary D. Cohn have routed official communications through personal accounts, along with ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus, former chief strategist and ex-Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon and even Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, according to anonymous officials speaking to The New York Times.

US officials are now demanding more information from White House counsel Donald McGahn, via a letter from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. McGahn has until 9 October to identify "any non-career official" who used a personal account for official White House business.

The news comes just days after Kushner's lawyer Abbe Lowell admitted that the President's son-in-law and close personal advisor used a privately-controlled email account to handle official communications.

This behaviour is not illegal, provided that the emails are forwarded to an official account for auditing and oversight purposes, which Lowell claims Kushner did. He also said that less than 100 emails were handled.

However, the revelations have drawn accusations of hypocrisy from many pundits. Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server was one of Trump's main points of attack during the presidential election campaign, with Trump stating that it was evidence of corruption on the part of his opponent. Clinton and her allies pointed to then-FBI director Jasmes Comey's decision to re-open the investigation into Clinton's emails on the eve of the election as one of the main reasons she lost.

One of Trump's most popular campaign slogans was "lock her up", and the president repeatedly pledged to do everything in his power to get his political rival thrown in jail for the same thing that his son-in-law and close political advisor has now admitted to, before walking back from those promises once elected.

IT Pro has contacted the president for comment. We will update when we receive a response.

Picture: Bigstock

An estimated 80% of social business efforts do not achieve the intended benefits, according to Gartner, due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology. So how do CIOs establish the right policies for social media use within their organisations and how can IT leaders help the rest of the business make the most of the technology?

Christian McMahon, managing director and interim CIO at transformation specialist three25, says the biggest challenge for c-suite executives is the consistent reinforcement of the corporate message across multiple social accounts, without restricting usage.

McMahon says most companies have a set of brand values and marketing-driven statements that they want to get across. He says the desire to ensure consistency in messaging helps explain why so many organisations choose to centrally manage or outsource their social media accounts to an external agency. However, the hands-off approach can have its downsides.

"Outsourcing account management can actually stifle the message and turn your social media platform into another version of a staid and monotonous corporate web site. That approach will not endear you to the target markets you are trying so desperately to reach," says McMahon, who has held CIO roles at analyst firm Ovum and liquidity specialist GoIndustry.

"In my opinion, its key that you endorse corporate guidelines, but that you also allow the rope to be let out a little amongst your employees in order to encourage spontaneity that can help energise your social message. This will separate you from the herd, reinforce your brand and even attract new customers and talent."

It is a sentiment that chimes with Neil Moore, head of ICT at Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service. He says the key to making the most of social media is to give employees the room to engage. "All of our stations have got their own Twitter accounts and so we encourage staff to be proactive," he says.

The thought of a proactive approach might raise an alarm amongst more reticent business leaders. Moore recognises some executives will occasionally find a tweet where an individual says something that has not been thought through. However, the fire service is creating big benefits through social media and these plus-points are being recognised across the organisation.

"Generally speaking, we are maturing as an organisation in terms of how we use social media and the benefits of community engagement through social media hugely outweigh the concerns associated to the occasional problematic update," he says. Such is the power of collaboration that Hampshire Fire Service even runs its own internal Twitter awards ceremony.

"We have a series of categories for individuals, teams and stations," says Moore. "Our dog handlers, for example, might tweet about what they're up to. We've found that tweets about animal rescue create a huge amount of interest, particularly in the local media."

Laying the ground for success

IT departments, then, can play an important role in establishing the foundation for social success. Graham Benson, CIO at Rentalcars.com, says his team needs to understand customer requirements and help implement the right kinds of technical solutions. As a customer-focused organisation, he says the IT team will supply solutions to whatever challenges the business suggests its customers face.

"Collaboration has an increasingly important part to play in customer service, particularly in regards to engagement," he says. "There's a lot of chat about how social media can be monetised but I think customers wants to use the platform as a service and feedback outlet."

Carnegie Mellon University research suggests 72 % of online buyers actively use social media to build relationships and gather information on a company and its products. However, the research also states engagement is driven by subjects that capture the attention of the target audience. Benson suggests CIOs must work with trusted specialists to meet customer needs.

"The social strategy should be set by the marketing team and the user experience specialists," he says. "Our job, as the IT team, is to provide the technology and services that underpin that strategy. Of course, we need to have things like appropriate security levels, but ultimately the mobile strategy for our business is all about what's good for the consumer."

Tonino Ciuffini is another IT leader who says a successful approach to online collaboration is all about putting the client first. Ciuffini, who is head of information assets at Warwickshire County Council, says senior officials at his organisation understand the power of social selling.

"We use social media across the business," he says. "It's absolutely the right thing to do when it comes to keeping in touch with customers." The council press office, for example, provides regular updates, as do other council accounts, such as those associated to library and museum services.

"It's great when your organisation can use a platform to engage with citizens, to make it fun and to encourage more people to join in," says Ciuffini. "If the brand is right and the subject is right, social media will work. It's not quite as easy to create engagement around committee reports, for example."

Internal communication in the technology team is also kept from social platforms, says Ciuffini: "In most instances, face-to-face conversations and emails still predominate. We've talked about communication styles many times but our IT staff don't want to receive updates through Twitter or Google+."

Some technology chiefs, however, are exploring how social media can be used to boost customer satisfaction internally. Matt Britland, director of ICT at Lady Eleanor Holles School, has pioneered the use of Facebook in an educational setting. He uses closed private rooms with certain year groups to help facilitate discussion and information sharing.

"It's a free tool and all our students are already on the platform," says Britland. "It's about making the most of the tools that students are already using and showing them how it can be used in a way that they might not have considered."

He says the private group function in Facebook allows staff and students to create an on-going discussion forum. The opportunity to embed video and other content provides another boon in terms of collaboration.

"The students are great," says Britland. "Lots of pupils have their own groups for particular interests, both educationally and socially. We're finding that students are very proactive they're taking the tools and making their own choices."

If you click on the setting wheel icon within Outlook.com, you should see a drop down menu with a Leave Feedback option.

Click on this, and you'll be asked to select a box that best describes the nature of your feedback ("I love the new look" or "I don't like the new look"). Once that's done, you'll be asked to complete a form where you can go into more detail about what you do or don't like about the service, and whether or not you would recommend it to others.

Unfortunately, you can't. While users who trialled Outlook.com before its full launch were able to switch back and forth, since the Hotmail brand was retired if you switched over there's no way to switch back and you can't sign up for a new hotmail account.

The option to forward on an email no longer has its own standalone tab, like it did in Hotmail, which has created confusion for lots of users since the Outlook.com switchover took place.

If you need to access this feature, open an email and click on the reply tab. This will result in a drop down menu appearing that features a "Forward" option.

If you click on the downward arrow in the top left hand corner of the Outlook.com home screen, a menu with four tabs should drop down.

Click on the one marked "People" and all of your old Hotmail contacts should be there. If that's not the case, it might be worth flagging this issue to Microsoft to see if they can shed any light on it.

The People tab also lets you populate your contacts list with details of your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn connections, and message their social networking profiles without leaving Outlook.

Whereas Hotmail provided users with a chronological view of ever email they had received, Outlook.com groups together correspondents that have been sent by the same contact into an ongoing thread, making it difficult for users to pick out individual messages.

It's a similar system to the one employed by Gmail and the online version of Microsoft's corporate Outlook product, but if you're used to seeing your emails lined up in a linear fashion it may take a little while to get used to.

Microsoft appears to have re-jigged the print email function in Outlook since we originally posted our tutorial, much to the chargrin of users.

Previously, when you opened an Outlook email, you would click on the "Actions" button in the top right hand corner, which would result in a drop down menu appearing with a "Print Message" option.

Since then the "Actions" tab appears to have been discontinued and replaced with a "...", as pictured.

If you click on this, a new drop down menu should appear, and the "Print" option is listed at the bottom.

However, as you can see from the comments box below, some users seem to be without an "Actions" or "..." tab at this time, so all we can suggest is using your browser's print page function (CTRL + P) until Microsoft comes up with a suitable alternative.

Although this is hardly an ideal solution because, as well as the email, the Outlook side bars (detailing how many items are currently sitting in your inbox) and the ads along the right hand side, will also be printed out too.

If you click on the setting wheel icon within Outlook.com, you should see a drop down menu with a Leave Feedback option.

Click on this, and you'll be asked to select a box that best describes the nature of your feedback ("I love the new look" or "I don't like the new look"). Once that's done, you'll be asked to complete a form where you can go into more detail about what you do or don't like about the service, and whether or not you would recommend it to others.

Microsoft has made it relatively easy to deactivate Outlook.com accounts. To do this, users simply need to click on the account settings tab, scroll down and there should be an option to close your account there.

When you click on this, you'll be asked to enter your Outlook.com password and then taken to another screen that asks you to deactivate your account.

For some reason, when IT Pro clicked on the deactive Hotmail account link, we were taken back to the MSN home page. However, if this happens to you, try clicking here instead, as this allowed us to proceed with the termination process.

If you have a change of heart once you've deactivated your account, as long as you log into it again within 365 days, you can reclaim your email address and username.

Unfortunately, your contacts and emails are likely to have been wiped. So, if you do decide to pursue this route, make sure you've backed up everything first.

Microsoft has made it relatively easy to deactivate Outlook.com accounts. To do this, users simply need to click on the account settings tab, scroll down and there should be an option to close your account there.

When you click on this, you'll be asked to enter your Outlook.com password and then taken to another screen that asks you to deactivate your account.

For some reason, when IT Pro clicked on the deactive Hotmail account link, we were taken back to the MSN home page. However, if this happens to you, try clicking here instead, as this allowed us to proceed with the termination process.

If you have a change of heart once you've deactivated your account, as long as you log into it again within 365 days, you can reclaim your email address and username.

Unfortunately, your contacts and emails are likely to have been wiped. So, if you do decide to pursue this route, make sure you've backed up everything first.

Unfortunately, you can't. While users who trialled Outlook.com before its full launch were able to switch back and forth, since the Hotmail brand was retired if you switched over there's no way to switch back and you can't sign up for a new hotmail account.

The option to forward on an email no longer has its own standalone tab, like it did in Hotmail, which has created confusion for lots of users since the Outlook.com switchover took place.

If you need to access this feature, open an email and click on the reply tab. This will result in a drop down menu appearing that features a "Forward" option.

If you click on the downward arrow in the top left hand corner of the Outlook.com home screen, a menu with four tabs should drop down.

Click on the one marked "People" and all of your old Hotmail contacts should be there. If that's not the case, it might be worth flagging this issue to Microsoft to see if they can shed any light on it.

The People tab also lets you populate your contacts list with details of your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn connections, and message their social networking profiles without leaving Outlook.

Whereas Hotmail provided users with a chronological view of ever email they had received, Outlook.com groups together correspondents that have been sent by the same contact into an ongoing thread, making it difficult for users to pick out individual messages.

It's a similar system to the one employed by Gmail and the online version of Microsoft's corporate Outlook product, but if you're used to seeing your emails lined up in a linear fashion it may take a little while to get used to.

Microsoft appears to have re-jigged the print email function in Outlook since we originally posted our tutorial, much to the chargrin of users.

Previously, when you opened an Outlook email, you would click on the "Actions" button in the top right hand corner, which would result in a drop down menu appearing with a "Print Message" option.

Since then the "Actions" tab appears to have been discontinued and replaced with a "...", as pictured.

If you click on this, a new drop down menu should appear, and the "Print" option is listed at the bottom.

However, as you can see from the comments box below, some users seem to be without an "Actions" or "..." tab at this time, so all we can suggest is using your browser's print page function (CTRL + P) until Microsoft comes up with a suitable alternative.

Although this is hardly an ideal solution because, as well as the email, the Outlook side bars (detailing how many items are currently sitting in your inbox) and the ads along the right hand side, will also be printed out too.

If you click on the setting wheel icon within Outlook.com, you should see a drop down menu with a Leave Feedback option.

Click on this, and you'll be asked to select a box that best describes the nature of your feedback ("I love the new look" or "I don't like the new look"). Once that's done, you'll be asked to complete a form where you can go into more detail about what you do or don't like about the service, and whether or not you would recommend it to others.

Microsoft has made it relatively easy to deactivate Outlook.com accounts. To do this, users simply need to click on the account settings tab, scroll down and there should be an option to close your account there.

When you click on this, you'll be asked to enter your Outlook.com password and then taken to another screen that asks you to deactivate your account.

For some reason, when IT Pro clicked on the deactive Hotmail account link, we were taken back to the MSN home page. However, if this happens to you, try clicking here instead, as this allowed us to proceed with the termination process.

If you have a change of heart once you've deactivated your account, as long as you log into it again within 365 days, you can reclaim your email address and username.

Unfortunately, your contacts and emails are likely to have been wiped. So, if you do decide to pursue this route, make sure you've backed up everything first.

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) is a Linux-based groupware system designed to provide your staff with unified email, calendar, contacts and basic file-sharing. Both commercial and open source versions are available. We've looked at the open source version as a cost-effective alternative to commercial server-based products such as Microsoft Exchange Server and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) systems such as Google Apps for Work.

An added advantage that locally-hosted email and groupware systems have over SaaS products is that you are in full control of your own data, and can ensure that it's kept within the EU, or indeed your own business premises, making it easy to comply with legal and contractual obligations regarding confidential customer and financial data.

The paid-for version of Zimbra has extra features, most notably ActiveSync for mobile devices and a plugin for Microsoft Outlook. Standard comparative pricing is not available, as the company provides quotes on a per-client basis.

Basic configuration

We installed Zimbra on a vanilla Ubuntu 14.04 system. It's a simple process, thanks to an installation script that's provided with the download that checks for all the required system packages. However, rather than automatically installing missing packages, it lists them and exits.

Armed with this list, installing the missing dependencies was just a matter of a few minutes and a handful of apt-get commands. With that done, installation proceeded smoothly. We left most options, such as install locations and services, on their default settings, but had to correct the domain, as the installer attempted to use the hostname as the domain.

At the final stage, the script gives you a chance to review all the settings and options chosen, correct any missing elements in the configuration, and save the config to a file before committing it to the system. With that done, all we had to do was set a password for the admin account. Once the script finished installing all the required components, the comprehensive installation documentation directed us to the administration web interface. When you connect to the web interface for the first time, you'll get a certificate warning from your browser, as you won't yet have had the opportunity to upload an appropriate signed certificate to the server.

Web administration

The web administration interface has a refreshingly clean layout, with a simple menu on the left and a central pane for editing settings. When you first connect, the home screen lists 3 sets of tasks needed to get the server running, but you'll have already taken care of most of the first two stages during installation.

Zimbra's admin screen helps guide you through configuration when you first log into it

At this point, it's important to check the default Class of Service (COS) settings. This screen contains all the settings used as defaults when adding new users, such as language and time zone, enabled features, and themes. The system defaults to internal user management, but you can alternatively set it up to use an external Active Directory or LDAP server to manage your users. This is set individually for each email domain configured on the system.

Additional commands are available from a drop-down menu at the top right of the settings window. This replaces the options that would normally appear as a right-click context menu on systems such as Microsoft Exchange.

Accounts are configured from the accounts page in the Manage menu. Adding a new account brings up a window with a large number of options, but once the basic user details are entered, the remaining options will all be preset to the values set in the default COS, so it can be left as is if no specific customization is required for the user in question.

Zimbra's global admin settings are automatically applied to all accounts

This is also where you'll go to set or reset a user's preferences, for example if they've accidentally changed something in their own account configuration settings that's preventing them from using their account properly.

You can disable user access to their account preferences, either on a per-user basis or via the default COS setting. However, although this means that users won't be able to tinker with advanced options such as trusted address settings, it'll also prevent them from setting signatures, filters and out of office auto-replies. We'd have preferred to be able to control which preferences a user could access rather than it being an all-or-nothing choice.

ZCS can also be extended through the use of third-party plugins, called Zimlets, which can be installed through a dedicated area in the admin interface's configuration settings. These can provide extra functionality such as instant messaging, Dropbox integration, and video conferencing control. Some Zimlets have been adopted by the Zimbra developers, and are pre-installed, such as email archiving and the ability to ring phone numbers using Skype. There's also a JavaScript API, so you can develop in-house Zimlets if required.

You can add Zimlets - community developed extensions to ease integration between Zimbra and other services

User experience

Like the web-based admin interface, the user web interface is clean and well thought out. Zimbra's capabilities as a polished and professional webmail client set it apart from most Linux-based email systems. The menus are logical and reasonably intuitive for anyone who's used any kind of webmail before, with everything pretty much where you'd expect it to be.

We're big fans of Zimbra's uncluttered and well designed web interface, which provides webmail, calendar, contact book and file sharing capabilities

The interface is split into separate tabs for mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, briefcase and preferences. The briefcase tab provides an online file store for each user, with the option of sharing folders with other users or groups on the system, and even allowing external users to view shared content. Most of the sharing controls are available via a context menu in the Briefcase itself and in individual user's preferences. The admin can enable and disable the feature on a global or per-user basis, however.

The Briefcase allows users to store and share files with colleagues and contacts

Zimbra uses standard POP3 and IMAPS mail protocols, so you can use any standard desktop or mobile client to access your email. However, there is no official mobile support at all for any of the other features of the system, such as your calendar, contacts or shared files. The Zimbra web interface admittedly scales well to mobile browsers, giving full access to your contracts, shared files and calendar. However, without proper support for syncing data with your mobile OS, push notifications or even official dedicated calendar and contacts apps, mobile integration is poor overall.

Zimbra works well with mobile browsers but a web-based calendar is no substitute for proper integration with your phone calendar and contact books

Although both the commercial and open source versions of Zimbra are popular alternatives to Microsoft Exchange, you can't actually access the open source version's calendar and contacts from Outlook at all. The paid-for version relies on an Outlook plugin to make its extended features function properly with Microsoft's email client.

Zimbra Open Source Edition provides support to desktop users only through their browser or Zimbra's own free desktop client for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The desktop client is basically a carbon copy of the web interface, with its layout and overall appearance duplicated almost exactly. The only notable difference is that users can't configure filters from the desktop client, and are instead directed to the web interface. All other functions and settings are available.

Note, however, that the open source edition of Zimbra does not support autodiscover, so admins will need to either set up the desktop client for their users or give them the login details and server connection settings they'll need to set up the desktop client themselves.

Zimbra's desktop client replicates almost all the user features of the web version, except filter creation

Conclusions

The Open Source Edition of Zimbra Collaboration Suite is an excellent web-based groupware system. However, both its lack of mobile device support for any feature beyond basic email and its meagre desktop support for popular email clients other than Outlook doesn't exactly mesh with its claim of being a complete, next generation messaging and collaboration system. Although its web client works remarkably well from most mobile browsers, the lack of true calendar syncing to smartphones means that missed appointments are always going to be a risk if you have staff who rely heavily on mobile synchronisation while on the road.

If you're looking for a glossy, open-source webmail and collaboration system that'll run on your own servers then Zimbra is a capable and easy-to-use option. However the lack of granularity when it comes to controlling which preferences users can and cannot modify is disappointing, and the absence of any autodiscover support can make the process of rolling out the desktop client time consuming unless your users can be trusted to do their own basic configuration.

Verdict

A good groupware system, but it's behind the times when it comes to mobile support

Server requirements

1.5GHz 64-bit processor

8GB of RAM

minimum 5GB disk space

Yahoo has stopped some of its customers accessing their email inbox if they are running ad blockers, in an attempt to dissuade people from using the software.

Customers in the US have reported seeing a message from the internet company asking them to disable their ad blocker before being able to view their inbox.

Although some users said they had been able to circumvent the message, others haven't been so lucky and were disappointed Yahoo was taking such steps. In fact, one customer, Andrei Herasimchuk - Yahoo's former Senior Director of Product Design, said he was planning to move to Apple Mail as a result of Yahoo's actions.

"So @YahooMail has blocked my inbox for using an ad blocker. It was a good run, I guess. Goodbye! Hello Apple Mail, as much as I hate it," he wrote on Twitter.

Yahoo said it had made the move as part of its US product testing scheme, but it didn't say whether it would continue to test the pop-up or disable it as a result of customer complaints.

The company explained only some users were seeing the message because it was A/B testing the ad blocker detecting technology.

"At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences. This is a test we're running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the US," a spokesperson told Engadget.

Yahoo is the latest company to restrict access to its website for those running ad blockers. In the past, high-profile companies including The Washington Post and City AM have trialled similar methods to encourage users to disable ad blocking tech.

Tom Yeomans, CEO of Yavli, a company that makes technology to subvert ad blockers, told Digiday: "They're likely testing this particular approach, banning ad blocker users, on their email service because they know their users will be forced to disable their ad blocker if they want to check their emails within their web browser.

"Their users' email account content are unique to them, so it's different from news content where they can visit a competing website to get a same or similar experience."

Office has been around for 25 years now and been an essential part of any desktop computer during that time. But how did Word fend off WordPerfect and Excel make Lotus 1-2-3 merely a side note in history?

Pre-history

The core applications that made up the first version of Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint) existed as separate applications as far back as the early eighties. It was 1989 before these would come together as Microsoft Office 1.0. That was for the Mac, the Windows version would come a year later.

Prior to that, Word and Excel existed as separate programs. The first version of Word was developed by Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie, former Xerox programmers hired by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1981. Word 1.0 was launched in October 1983 or Xenix and MS-DOS. It wasn't until Windows 3.0 came out in 1990 that Word became a commercial success, eclipsing rival word processor WordPerfect (which never recovered). Part of this was because Word was more mouse-centric that WordPerfect (which was more keyboard-centric).

Before Excel there was a spreadsheet package created by Microsoft called Multiplan. It was launched in 1982. While popular on computers running CP/M, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled on MS-DOS. Its other competitor was VisiCalc. The first version of Excel was launched for the Mac on September 30, 1985, and the first Windows version was 2.05 in November 1987. Lotus was slow to bring 1-2-3 to Windows, giving Microsoft a head start. By 1988 Excel was outselling 1-2-3.

PowerPoint has its history in another program called Presenter, an application developed for the Mac in 1987. It was renamed PowerPoint over trademark issues. In August of the same year, PowerPoint's developers, Forethought, was bought by Microsoft for $14 million. The first version of this software to be produced under the Microsoft name came out in 1990 when Windows 3.0 was launched.

The Office family gets bigger

With Word, Excel and PowerPoint together under the Office banner, soon came other applications. Just after Office 1.0 was released, a basic email client called Microsoft Mail was added. Database Microsoft Access was launched in 1993 as part of Office Professional 3.0.

Other Office applications have been developed and added to Office over the years. Mail was beefed up, given a personal information manager and called Outlook. OneNote was added to bring a virtual notebook; Publisher, a simple desktop publishing program; Project, a project management tool; and Visio, a flowchart and diagram application.

Getter bigger and onto more platforms

Over a billion people now use Office around the world. It is not only available as software you install on the desktop; it also comes as SaaS in the form of Office 365. Versions for iOS and Android operating systems have also been developed as users' need change. While Windows may falter, Office remains virtually unchallenged, despite the emergence of cloud-based rivals, such as Google Apps. Here's a brief history of Office.

An Office timeline

Turn to the next page for more detail about each version of Office so far...

Office 1.0

In November 1990 Office 1.0 was launched. This was a combination of Word 1.1, Excel 2.0 and PowerPoint 2.0. This was the same year Microsoft became the first company to exceed $1 billion in sales for one year. Microsoft Office for Windows 1.5 updated the suite with Microsoft Excel 3.0, while Office 1.6 added Microsoft Mail for PC Networks 2.1.

Office 3.0

Also known as Microsoft Office 92, this contained Word 2.0, Excel 4.0, PowerPoint 3.0 and Mail 3.0. It was also the first suite to be released on CD-ROM. Microsoft Office Professional added Microsoft Access 1.1

Office 4.0

This release featured Word 6.0, Excel 4.0a, PowerPoint 3.0 and Mail. Word had a version number jump to 6.0 from 2.0 so that it would have the same version number as the MS-DOS and Macintosh versions. Microsoft Office 4.2 for Windows NT was released in 1994 for i386, Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC platforms. This features Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0 (both 32-bit, PowerPoint 4.0 (16-bit), and Microsoft Office Manager 4.2 (a forerunner to the Office Shortcut bar).

Microsoft Office 95

As Windows 95 launched so did Office 95 followed. Version numbers were altered to keep step across the suite. It was also fully 32-bit to run on Windows 95. There were two versions; Office 95 Standard and Office 95 Professional. The latter sported Access 7.0.

Microsoft Office 97

Boasting a plethora of new features and improvements, Office 97 launched command bars that made menus and toolbars more similar in capability and visual design. This was the first version to feature the infamous Clippie Office Assistant.

Microsoft Office 2000

Also known as Office 9.0, this debuted adaptive menus, where lesser-used options were hidden from the user. There were also security features including digital signing to combat macro viruses.

Microsoft Office XP

Released in conjunction with Windows XP, Office XP (aka Office 9.0) was a major upgrade to the suite. This unveils a Safe Mode feature that enables applications to boot when it might otherwise fail. This allowed the suite to detect and either repair or bypass the source of the problem. Also introduced integrated voice command and text dictation capabilities, as well as handwriting recognition.

Microsoft Office 2003

Released in 2003, Office 11.0, sports a new logo and added new applications; InfoPath and OneNote. It also improved functionality, such as Kerberos authentication, RPC over HTTP, Cached Exchange Mode, and an enhanced junk mail filter.

Microsoft Office 2007

Office 12.0 sported a new graphical user interface called Fluent. This swapped menus and toolbars for a tabbed toolbar also known as the Ribbon interface. New XML-based file formats also debut alongside a new application called Groove, a collaborative application.

Microsoft Office 2010

Skipping Office 13.0 (it's bad luck), Office 14.0 came with a backstage file menu, new collaboration tools, a customizable ribbon, protected view and a navigation panel. This was also the first version of Office to come as either a 32-bit or 64-bit version. Microsoft launched Service Pack 1 for Office 2010 on 28 June 2011.

Microsoft Office 2013

Another application interface revamp for Office 15.0 based on the Modern UI (nee Metro). There are new visualisations for scheduled task and PowerPoint gets more templates and transition effects. Excel comes with a tool for filtering data in a timeline and the integration of advanced trigonometric functions. The suite makes use of cloud computing and adds touch capabilities. At the same time, Microsoft launched Office 365, its cloud-based version of the office suite to allow users to access and work on documents without having to be present at a particular computer.

Microsoft Office 2016

This includes the capacity to create, open, edit, and save files in the cloud straight from the desktop as well as a search tool called "Tell Me" that helps users find out how to do things in applications. There is also a feature called Insights. Powered by Bing, this provides contextual information from the web. There are also new chart types in Excel, such as treemap, sunburst chart, waterfall chart, box plot and histogram. Office 2016 also removes the ability to run old versions of Office in parallel to the latest one.

Instant messaging (IM) services like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are set to overtake email, according to new research.

Last year, email made up the majority of internet messaging traffic, with around 35 trillion messages sent globally.

Data compiled by Juniper analysts now shows that over the next year, IM services will surpass this figure, accumulating almost 43 trillion messages.

The research cited the low cost of most messaging services as well as the spread of inexpensive mobile internet as one of the trend's key contributing factors.

WhatsApp alone hosts more than 30 billion messages per day, according to the company, and services like WeChat and Snapchat have had similar success.

Also noted is the fact that 80 per cent of emails sent can be dismissed as spam, possibly indicating that by some benchmarks, email has already been surpassed as the dominant messaging form.

However, SMS remains a hugely successful messaging format, particularly for enterprise users. Network provider EE uses SMS to communicate with its customers, and states that 99 per cent of all text messages are read by the recipient, with 90 per cent being read within three minutes.

Further highlighted is the comparatively slow adoption of Over-The-Top internet messaging services in the developing world.

"While there may be a trend towards OTT messaging, SMS is always there in times when Internet access may be impossible, or 3G/4G coverage poor. Its reliability means that messages have a very low non-delivery rate.

"SMS also maintains dominance in regions where featurephone use exceeds smartphone penetration, ensuring it is still a viable means of communication, at least in the medium term."

This research may suggest that IM will quickly replace most other forms of communication, but Juniper's findings indicate that despite the considerable growth, "IM's equivalent per-message revenue return is forecast to be less than 1% of that generated through SMS and MMS in 2019."

The stock email app on Android is all well and good but may not be to everyone's tastes.

But don't worry: developers have created countless other email apps that claim to do a much better job of helping you sift from thousands of messages on the quest to reach inbox zero.

Which email apps are best for making you more productive? Which will help you prioritise your day better? We run down a list of the ten best and most popular email apps for Android in 2015.

1 - Gmail

Download Gmail here

Description: Google's official email app may not have the whistles and bells of other apps, but if you are Gmail user this is one to have.

Price: Free

Details: While it doesn't sport as many features as other email apps on the list, this has one of the most powerful search features (you wouldn't expect any less), great notifications and an interface that takes design cues from the web app and Google's Material Design ethos.

The business case: The use of primary colours should make it easy and intuitive to use.

2 - Microsoft Outlook

Download Outlook here

Description: Microsoft's official email app arranges messages according to what's most important to you.

Price: Free

Details: Outlook is Microsoft's email app for Android. It combines contacts, email and calendars all in one app. It goes through your messages determining which are most important, putting other emails into a separate folder to look at later. The app can also schedule meetings, set reminders, attach files and much besides.

The business case: If you find yourself missing messages because of a cluttered inbox, this app can help filter out the unnecessary and pull out what's most important.

3 - Mailbox

Download Mailbox here

Description: Mailbox is Dropbox's email client and one of the first to feature swipe gestures

Price: Free

Details: Mailbox was bought by Dropbox a few years ago and was one of the first email clients on a smartphone to make the process of sorting and replying to emails much easier. In the meantime, other apps have copied these features. It's still simple to use, but perhaps now has been overtaken by the competition.

The business case: If you are looking for an email app that helps you tackle your email mountain; this simple app is the way to go.

4 - Inbox

Download Inbox here

Description: Google's second attempt at an email app

Price: Free

Details: Google likes to make email apps. So here's another one. The app is still in beta but promises to help you focus on what is important to you and show you that first.

It features Bundles, which groups messages together; Highlights that show important information without opening the message. You can also set reminders, snooze emails and search for messages.

The business case: If you use Gmail and want to focus on particular emails, this is one to consider.

5 - CloudMagic

Download CloudMagic here

Description: Integrates email with other SaaS offerings.

Price: Free

Details: This Android app provides a unified inbox that works with a host of different email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, iCloud, Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, AOL and other IMAP accounts.

It also integrates with Salesforce.com, Zendesk, Pocket, Evernote, OneNote, Trello and MailChimp

The business case: A great app to use if you want seamless integration between your email and SaaS to make you more productive at work.

6 Mail Wise

Download Mail Wise here

Description: Turns email into something more akin to messaging

Price: Free

Details: Emails have a certain format encompassing the body of the previous message as well as email signatures and other gumph. Mail Wise strips this out and focuses on the body of the message, making email threads look more like instant messaging. It also sports handy swipe gestures.

The business case: This app cuts to the chase in terms of getting directly to the message.

7 - MyMail

Download MyMail here

Description: The great looking app supports all the major email providers.

Price: Free

Details: This app not only works with the major email providers and any IMAP or POP account, but has a great looking user interface to boot. Each thread shows up photo avatars of the people you are corresponding with. Attachments can be added and viewed within the app.

The business case: The clutter-free interface and how it works with attachments should appeal to business people.

8 Type Mail

Download Type Mail

Description: This email app combines a task list and alarm clock to keep you on your toes.

Price: Free

Details: Type Mail has a user interface that would make you think you are using an iOS device. It can manage an unlimited number of email accounts. You can set quiet hours for when you don't want notifications to pop up and disturb your work. Emails can also be written and scheduled to be sent at a more suitable time.

The business case: This simple email app will work with lots of providers as well as the majority of corporate email servers.

9 - WeMail

Download WeMail here

Description: Heavily influenced by Google's Material Design, this email client groups emails by sender rather than date.

Price: Free

Details: The interface is clean and takes its cues from Google's Material Design. It sorts emails by sender rather than chronologically and organises messages into a more chat-like experience. It can search by message and attachment. It can also compose and reply to emails with voice messages.

The business case: This email app promises to reduce your inbox size by 50 per cent and claims to have the fastest and most advanced email search of any client.

10 Nine Exchange

Download Nine Exchange here

Description: Primarily aimed at Exchange users, this app also works with other email servers.

Price: Free with in-app purchases

Details: This is billed as a fully-fledged email application for Android based on Direct Push technology that synchronises with Microsoft Exchange Server using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. IT also works with Hotmail, Outlook and Office 365 as well as other email servers.

The business case: A good alternative to Outlook if you want to use Exchange.

Yahoo Mail users have been hit by service problems for over a week as engineers battle to repair an undersea cable.

The cable was accidentally cut during routine maintenance work leaving UK and US users unable to access their accounts and others facing slow page loading times. The worst affected regions appear to be eastern US and western Europe.

Sky and BT customers were also affected, as both use Yahoo to provide email services to their users.

"We are aware that Yahoo Mail is slow or inaccessible for some of our users. The issues were a result of an underwater fibre cable cut, caused by a third party while fixing a separate cable," the firm said on its status page.

"The engineering team has rerouted email traffic to mitigate accessibility issues. A cable repair ship has been mobilised and will be at the site this weekend."

The notice added: "Some Yahoo Mail users are experiencing delays in accessing and viewing their mail. We'll be posting updates regularly on this page to keep everyone informed of our progress. Thank you for your patience as we work to fully resolve this."

The firm apologised for the inconvenience and said it understood that email was "a critical service" for its customers.

Disgruntled users have taken to social networking site Twitter to vent their frustrations about the service problems.

"If yahoo was #rbs they'd be fined 56m for locking us out of our accounts. How am I expected to run my business with #yahoomaildown?" tweeted one angry user.

The firm has not yet said when service would completely resume, but users are advised to follow Yahoo's Customer Care Twitter account @YahooCare for updates.

Update: According to Yahoo Mail's status page, engineers have located the underwater cable affecting its network. "Testing and repairs are currently taking place. The Yahoo engineering team continues to monitor email traffic. Thank you for your patience," it said.

Users once more took to Twitter to air their disgust.

"Yahoo mail is down again. Can't send emails. Do you ever notice that you never hear that Google Mail is down? #yahoomail #yahoomaildown," said Twitter user Mark LoPresti.

Email users should strive to respond quicker to emails and cut out unnecessary words, according to Google executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt, alongside Google's senior vice president of products Jonathan Rosenberg, laid out the ground rules for emailing in a new book, How Google Works.

The pair said being responsive sets up a "positive communications feedback loop" whereby your team and colleagues will be more likely to include you in important discussions and decisions.

"Being responsive to everyone reinforces the flat, meritocratic culture you are trying to establish," said Schmidt and Rosenberg.

The pair, writing in Time magazine, also advised readers to eliminate any words that aren't necessary.

Email users were also urged to clean out their inboxes and handle messages in a last in, first out order as older stuff will get taken care of by someone else.

People should also consider themselves as "routers" of information. When someone is emailed useful information, they should consider who else would find it useful.

"At the end of the day, make a mental pass through the mail you received and ask yourself, What should I have forwarded but didn't?'" the pair said.

Schmidt and Rosenberg warned against using blind carbon copy (BCC) in emails as well as using the caps lock.

They also said that email users should make it easy to follow up on requests by copying themselves in an email and marking it "follow up". A similar technique could also be used to help email users search for information by forwarding on emails to themselves and adding keywords they could later remember.

"This isn't just handy for emails, but important documents too. Jonathan scans his family's passports, licenses, and health insurance cards and emails them to himself along with descriptive keywords," said Schmidt. "Should any of those things go missing during a trip, the copies are easy to retrieve from any browsers."

BT has apologised to customers following an incident that left some subscribers without email for several days.

According to the telco, only a "minority of customers" were affected by the outage, caused by a technical error, that left them unable to access BT Mail for a number of days.

A spokesman for the company told IT Pro that it was advised by their email partner Openwave Messaging that there was a problem with migration on Saturday night, "which meant that a minority of BT's customers would have seen an error when trying to log in and were unable to access their email".

"These customers were also unable to receive any emails into their mailbox during the period. Openwave Messaging has advised that some emails may have not have been received or been lost during the period of affected service," he added.

The spokesman said that access now been restored for all customers and "if any customers are still be experiencing issues it may be because they haven't cleared their cache".

It gave a web link to instructions on how to clear the cache in order to get the service back up and running for punters. Should customers still have problems, BT asked them to contact it via its online form.

BT has been trying to move its email from Yahoo Mail to BT Mail since last year. The migration of millions of accounts has not gone smoothly.

The firm has also had to deal with a major outage that prevented millions of users from visiting certain websites, including BT's own customer service hub, thanks to a DNS error. The telco was once again forced to make an apology to customers.

Email has become the easy solution for contacting colleagues in the workplace, but it has replaced more traditional methods including face-to-face communication.

The average employee spends 40 per cent of the week dealing with internal emails, according to research by Atos Origin.

Other types of communication and collaboration make up a further 14 per cent of the average working week, with just 39 per cent of the time remaining to accomplish role-specific tasks, it claims.

In 2012, McKinsey Global Institute found social media is a much more effective way of communicating. Its study suggested utilising such tools could improve worker productivity by 20 to 25 per cent.

Although that research was carried out at the tail end of 2012, it's even more relevant today. Indeed, companies are migrating their internal communications to social network-like solutions en masse.

Jeffery Mann, research vice president for collaboration and social software at Gartner, thinks email is a victim of its own success.

"Because it is so ubiquitous, [email] ends up being used for many purposes it is not very good at. The primary resulting issue is one of volume; there is just too much of it, and the means to classify and filter it are generally fairly weak," he says.

"Email is fine when it is part of the communications and collaboration repertoire. When it is the only tool available, it often gets misused."

Unison Technologies is just one of the companies trying to move companies away from using email to communicate internally, instead using rooms' to discuss projects and matters instantly. The company provides a standard cloud service that includes customisation options for branding, directory integration and compliance controls.

Most clients are highly distributed or mobile organisations and many are UK-based, although Devidas Desai, the firm's director of product management, couldn't reveal who Unison was working with.

"If your team is distributed across multiple locations and time zones or simply highly mobile, you're often guessing: What's happening right now in one office or another? What's going on with my key deals or projects?" he says.

Each one of these is a multi-step process to answer. The further apart you are by distance, time or corporate boundaries, the worse it gets.

Unison answers these questions on a single screen, putting you in control. You instantly know what the latest is, who's where, what they're working on, even who they're talking to. You can lead your team or business or project from your smartphone.

Rooms are private group spaces and the only people who can see and access them are the members. Companies use them to manage projects, ongoing issues, teams and keep up on industry news.

Although banning internal email may be dramatically reducing the amount of time you spend using services such as Gmail and Outlook, both of these also offer IM platforms, allowing you to communicate instantly, in real time.

Microsoft's Lync IM platform (formerly Microsoft Office Communicator) allows you to communicate with fellow employees instantly. Available with the Microsoft Lync Server or through Microsoft Office 365, the suite also enables you to talk over VoIP with workers or host video conferencing - allowing you to cut down on external email too.

If you're already using Gmail, Google Hangouts also allows you to hop on a call with fellow employees or just IM using the service in real time. With a mobile app, you can communicate whether you're in the office or on the move, too.

Despite cutting down on the email being sent through your company, using these solutions should also keep the major email providers happy too.

However, Mann thinks trying to eliminate email completely with solutions like this generates lots of heat, but little value.

"When elimination is the goal, it ends up being distracting. Banning email is not a business goal; it does not create happy customers or better products. Making it the locus of your attention means you aren't focusing on creating value," Mann adds.

"I think reducing or even eliminating email is a fine result or indicator of success when rolling out social tools or more collaborative ways of working. But the focus needs to be on the value created, not the elimination of an irritant."

Companies must provide better and more efficient ways of communicating, which will inevitably lessen the reliance on email. Social tools, for example, can be great for creating a foundation for new projects so workers can collaborate and ask questions quickly and easily even when they're not in the same room.

"Social displaces some interactions that are inefficient over email, but overall introduces more messages for workers to sift through," according to a study published by analyst firm Forrester Research in October 2013.

But, the report adds, that's not necessarily a bad thing because companies are investing in enterprise social solutions for the additional collaborative interaction it facilitates.

The key learning from this report says that by replacing internal email with a social network, workers have more messages to sift through and have to go looking for information because email has low noise - much of the time, emails are straight and to the point. Social, on the other hand, is exactly what its moniker suggests. Social means messages are going backwards and forwards and, as such, they're more likely to include things that are essentially off-topic.

Companies using an enterprise social service found employees had to spend more time looking for information, according to the research.

The problem may just be that social enterprise services haven't quite evolved enough to completely eliminate the need for internal email, claims Forrester analyst Philipp Karcher.

"Social today is a complement, not a replacement for email. Employees in the most mature social enterprises still check their inbox first and activity streams second," he says.

The solution could be email in the cloud allowing employees to have bigger inboxes with a better search and sorting facility, allowing social services to operate on the side.

"There are also new useful technologies to organize email like priority inbox and more radical solutions in the form of email filtering services like Sanebox," he explains.

Mann concurs, adding: "Match the tool to the style of working and incorporate it directly into processes. With no guidance or structure, people drop to the lowest common denominator that they know everyone looks at every day. Give them something better."

Some firms are having success with the social side of things though. In 2011, Thierry Breton, CEO of consulting and technology services firm Atos, decided to ban email to encourage his employees to start talking again, instead of relying on technology.

The company has 76,000 employees in 42 different countries and after asking its employees about their email habits, it turned out they spent between 15 to 20 hours a week checking and answering internal emails, with around 100 internal emails arriving a day. Only 15 per cent of these emails were deemed useful.

At the time of the announcement, Breton said: "If people want to talk to me, call or send me a text message," said Breton. "Emails cannot replace the spoken word."

After the announcement that Atos was going to eradicate the use of email, it announced its Zero Email social collaboration platform.

The collaboration platform allows instant discussion between its employees rather than sending emails back and forth all day. It lets employees conduct virtual meetings and set up communities. They can also access directories to find employee profiles and find relevant experts across the world, also working for Atos.

Employees can work more easily and co-create with their teams. Anyone in the whole company can post content so they are able to share ideas in real time, on any device. These are just some of the benefits gained as a result, according to Atos.

Now, three years after Breton announced he wanted his staff to stop using internal emails to communicate, Atos claims products have a faster time to market while the company has fuelled innovation and enhanced social wellbeing among its workers.

Although there's still a long way to go before all email - both internal and external - is banned, starting with cutting down on internal emails will encourage employees to work together more and can have other positive effects.

With a wealth of alternative communication tools available, including IM and the growing trend of companies introducing corporate social networks, we have to ask ourselves: Is it really that important to press send on that internal email when, chances are, your colleagues are based in the same building?

Microsoft has escaped the wrath of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), despite complaints being made about an anti-Gmail radio ad campaign the software giant recently ran.

The advert at the centre of the controversy suggested Gmail users should communicate with their contacts in Pig Latin to prevent Google from scanning the content of their emails for ad targeting purposes.

It then went on to claim Microsoft's own Outlook.com does not indulge in this practice, and also gives users the option to opt out from receiving personalised ads.

"To stop Gmail from using your emails, use Outlook.com," the advert stated.

According to an adjudication notice on the ASA's website, two people complained about the advert, claiming Microsoft was misleading listeners by implying Outlook provides greater privacy than Gmail.

"They understood that Outlook also scanned the contents of all emails, for purposes other than targeting ads," the ASA statement continued.

In its defence, Microsoft insisted it only scanned users' emails for viruses and spam, and that using the contents of emails to create targeted ads was a "significant privacy issue".

It then went on to state that it failed to mention its protective scanning procedures in the ad because it was standard practice within the industry, and many consumers will already be aware that it does this.

Therefore, the advert was not misleading listeners, Microsoft claimed.

In response, the ASA said Microsoft has no case to answer, because scanning emails for viruses is standard practice, and as such listeners were likely to expect it to be carried out as a matter of course.

"We noted the ad referred explicitly to Gmail scanning email content for the purposes of targeting ads, and this reference was immediately followed by the statement Outlook.com doesn't'. We considered listeners were likely to appreciate this statement was only in relation to scanning for ad targeting rather than protective scanning," the ASA stated.

"Because the ad made clear that the privacy claims were in relation to ad targeting, which Outlook.com does not carry out, [and] we therefore concluded that the ad was not misleading."

Google has increased Gmail security by switching on the option for all emails to be encrypted, even if you're just moving them around your inbox or between Google servers.

Previously, only emails sent to you were encrypted, but the company has revealed any data moving between different Google servers or datacentres will be secured.

Nicolas Lidzborski, Gmail security engineering lead at Google explained in the blog post, "Today's change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail's serversno matter if you're using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet."

The company decided to update its security as a "a top priority after last summer's revelation."

Google is referring to the interception of messages by the NSA, which the security agency dubbed Project Muscular.

It was revealed in October 2013 that the NSA had processed 181,280,466 records stored by Google and Yahoo, including the text, audio and video content within emails.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer said at the time, "We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform."

Google also revealed its Gmail service was available 99.978 per cent of the time in 2013, but the company is committed to ensuring this two hours of downtime across the whole year stays low.

"Our engineering experts look after Google's services 24x7 and if a problem ever arises, they're on the case immediately. We keep you informed by posting updates on the Apps Status Dashboard until the issue is fixed, and we always conduct a full analysis on the problem to prevent it from happening again," said Lidzborski

Thousands of email users have been sent a hoax message telling them they have cancer, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has warned. The email marks a new low in spammers' tactics.

The email with the header "important blood analysis result", tells people that NICE has been sent a sample of their blood for further research.

The health watchdog said the contents of the email are likely to be distressing and have reported the incident to the police. Since the outbreak of the email hoax, NICE has been deluged by calls from worried individuals over the email.

The scam email, with the subject line "Important blood analysis result" tells recipients that NICE has been sent a sample of the recipient's blood for analysis.

"During the complete blood count (CBC) we have revealed that white blood cells is very low, and unfortunately we have a suspicion of a cancer," the sick message reads.

The message then asks the user to open an attachment claiming to be the test results. However, asking users to download and open attachments is a common way for for cybercriminals to plant viruses and malware on a victim's computer.

Sir Andrew Dillon, NICE Chief Executive: "A spam email purporting to come from NICE is being sent to members of the public regarding cancer test results.

"This email is likely to cause distress to recipients since it advises that test results' indicate they may have cancer. This malicious email is not from NICE and we are currently investigating its origin. We take this matter very seriously and have reported it to the police."

NICE advised people who receive the email to immediately delete it without opening in and not to click on any links within the email either.

UPDATE: Email verified as containing Zeus malware

An IT security firm had confirmed that the scam email purporting to be from Nice actually harbours the Zeus malware.

Fred Touchette, senior security analyst for AppRiver said that the attachment is a malicious zip file.

"If the attachment is unzipped and executed the user may see a quick error window pop up and then disappear on their screen," said Touchette.

"What they won't see is the downloader then taking control of their PC. It immediately begins checking to see if it is being analysed, by making long sleep calls, and checking to see if it is running virtually or in a debugger."

Touchette said that the malware also makes several duplicate instances of itself just in case someone was attempting to shut down the original process.

"Next it begins to steal browser cookies and MS Outlook passwords from the system registry. The malware in turn posts this data to a server at 69.76.179.74 with the command /ppp/ta.php, and punches a hole in the firewall to listen for further commands on UDP ports 7263 and 4400."

He added that this is all very common behaviour for the Zeus family of malware which is still very common in today's attacks.

Email archiving vendor Mimecast has blamed a service outage that left many of its UK customers unable to send or receive emails today on a datacentre glitch.

The vendor specialises in cloud-based email archiving as well as continuity and security tools that are designed for use with Microsoft Exchange and Office 365.

The problems are understood to have begun around 11am today, with some users still reporting problems as this article went to press.

At the time of writing, IT Pro was also awaiting confirmation from Mimecast about the exact number of customers affected.

Many users have turned to social networking site Twitter and Mimecast's user forum to complain about the problems, with some blasting the firm's decision to rely on Twitter updates to keep them informed of its service status.

Shortly afterwards, the company published a blog post that shed some light on the cause of today's downtime.

In it, Orlando Scott-Cowley, a technologist at Mimecast, blamed the problems on a hardware network failure at the company's datacentre in Woking, Surrey.

"Our infrastructure teams have identified and isolated the problem, and are bringing all affected customer systems back online now," he wrote.

"Customers' systems will be available soon, but there will be backlog of email to process, so email may take some time to return to normal."

Ian Moyse, sales director at cloud CRM provider Workbooks.com, spent six years competing with Mimecast during his tenure at rival email security vendor Webroot.

Speaking to IT Pro, he said the difficulty for Mimecast will be regaining the trust of their customers, given its reputation as a purveyor of business continuity products.

"I am sure Mimecast has achieved a high per cent of availability for a long time and delivered a great outcome for clients in the past, but today's downtime will be remembered for a long time to come," he said.

"In the cloud you are only as good as your last day's availability and customer judgement comes quickly."

UPDATE:

Mimecast has assured customers their emails should be returning to normal now, after yesterday's service problems.

The email archiving vendor has published several blogs today, updating users about the status of its services, and claimed mail delivery to and from the Mimecast platform should be flowing as normal.

"In most cases there should be no queues or delays, but there may be some residual mail queues where a large backlog existed overnight," it states.

The problems were blamed yesterday on a hardware networking failure within the firm's Woking-based datacentre, but Mimecast now claims the affected infrastructure has been fully restored and protected.

"There are a small number of temporary work-arounds in place that will provide service to customers and allow us to restore normal services in the background," the blog post continued.

"Our infrastructure teams will bring service back online in a managed process so normal service will be restored throughout the day."

Microsoft claims it now has 400 million active Outlook.com users, after completing work on upgrading all of its Hotmail customers to the redesigned webmail platform.

The software giant confirmed the completion of its contentious Hotmail to Outlook.com upgrades in a blog post, where it revealed the process had required the migration of 150 petabyes of data.

"When Outlook.com came out of preview in February, it already had more than 60 million active accounts...[but] Hotmail was still one of the most widely used services, with over 300 million active accounts," the blog post stated.

"This meant communicating with hundreds of millions of people, upgrading all their mailboxes equalling more than 150 million gigabytes of data and making sure that every person's mail, calendar, contacts, folders and personal preferences were preserved.

"With your help, we were able to do all of that in just about six weeks," it added.

The blog post also acknowledges the upgrade has not been welcomed by everyone, something that has been borne out in many of the comments IT Pro has received from readers since Outlook.com first launched.

Many have complained about the product's new Windows 8-like interface, while others have experienced issues navigating the software, which IT Pro has sought to address here.

"Whenever a widely-used consumer service makes any substantial change, there will always be some folks that don't like it, and that shows up in the feedback," the blog post continues.

"Our belief is that as people start using the new experience, they will come to love it even more than they loved Hotmail."

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that Skype would be imminently available within Outlook.com for a select group of users to preview, while the blog post also hints that other new features and functionality will be added in due course too.

"Thank you for all the feedback along the way and everything you did to help make Outlook.com the best and fastest growing personal email out there," the blog post continued.

"We're excited to keep hearing from you and there's a lot more to come. Welcome to the new Outlook.com and onwards to a billion inboxes!"

Microsoft has started rolling out a preview version of its Skype video calling and messaging service to a select group of Outlook.com users in the UK.

By merging the two products, the software giant said users will be able to add their Skype contacts to their Outlook.com address book and call them back with "just a click" of the mouse.

The functionality is initially being offered to a sample of Outlook.com users in the US and UK for testing purposes, before being rolled out to all users in due course.

The software giant announced the move in a blog post yesterday, which features a step-by-step guide about how to use Skype in Outlook.com.

"With Skype coming to Outlook.com, we're bringing two of the world's largest communications services together in one place," wrote Douglas Pearce, group programme manager of connected services at Microsoft.

"We'll gradually make Skype calling available to all our Outlook.com customers as we update the experience based on your feedback," he added.

Outlook.com users selected to participate in the preview will be notified by a pop-up within their inbox, and can use their existing Skype account to take part.

To make use of the offering's video and audio call functionality, Outlook.com users will need to download a Skype web-plug in first, but this won't be necessary if they simply want to take advantage of its instant messaging capabilities.

Windows Messenger users upgraded to Skype as part of Microsoft's retirement plans for its ageing instant messaging platform can also draw on the merger to call their contacts using a web browser or Skype client, the blog post confirmed.

"As with any new experience we build, we'll be listening to feedback from the community and welcome your comments and ideas," added Pearce.

"When the Skype preview arrives in your Outlook.com inbox, we hope you try it out and let us know what you think."

The appearance of Skype is the latest enhancement Microsoft has made to Outlook.com, since ushering it in as a replacement for Hotmail earlier this year.

The switchover has hardly been plain sailing for the firm, with many users complaining about Outlook.com's new Windows 8-like interface and how difficult the new webmail service is to navigate.

Read our Outlook.com tutorial here.

Internet search engine Yahoo is to pull the plug on several online services to make way for a new generation of mobile applications.

The company is to close several products from the end of this month, including Yahoo Deals, Yahoo SMS Alerts, Yahoo Kids, as well as Yahoo Mail and Messenger feature phone apps.

It has also announced plans to shut down older versions of Yahoo Mail, from the start of June, with users encouraged to switch to the latest version of the product.

These are just the latest changes to be made since CEO Marissa Mayer organised a major overhaul of the company's design and policy last year.

Since taking over in July, Mayer has led the company through a series of dramatic changes, including a redesign of the Yahoo! homepage, availability of free food to the workforce, and a controversial crack down on home working.

In a blog post, announcing the product cull, Yahoo said the cuts would allow it to provide better products in the future.

"We realise that change is hard but by making tough decisions like these we can focus our energy on building beautiful products like the two we introduced this week," said the post.

The aforementioned services, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Weather are now available on iPad, Android devices, and iPhone, respectively.

The blog post provides few overt explanations as to why the services are going away, but emphasises that newer versions of products like Yahoo! Mail are "faster and easier-to-use."

A firmware upgrade in one of Microsoft's datacentres led to an outage that left users of its Hotmail and Outlook webmail without access to the service for hours.

In a blog, Arthur de Haan, vice president for Windows Live test and service engineering, said that the outage happened after the firm attempted to update the firmware on a core part of datacentre infrastructure. The outage affected some people's access to a small part of the SkyDrive service, but primarily Hotmail.com and Outlook.com, according to Microsoft.

"This is an update that had been done successfully previously, but failed in this specific instance in an unexpected way," said de Haan. "This failure resulted in a rapid and substantial temperature spike in the datacenter."

De Haan added that the spike was significant enough before it was mitigated that it caused safeguards to come into place for a large number of servers in this part of the datacentre.

"These safeguards prevented access to mailboxes housed on these servers and also prevented any other pieces of our infrastructure to automatically failover and allow continued access," he said.

Once the safeguards kicked in on these systems, the team was alerted and began to work on restoring access. A mix of infrastructure software and human intervention was needed to bring the core infrastructure back online., according to de Haan.

"Requiring this kind of human intervention is not the norm for our services and added significant time to the restoration," said de Haan.

The majority of the impacted mailboxes were fully restored before midnight and the rest completed by 5:30 AM local time.

De Haan said that the company regretted the impact of the outage had on users.

"Now that we're through the resolution, we're also hard at work on ensuring this doesn't happen again," he said.

As reported by IT Pro, this is just the latest in a series of outages the Microsoft webmail service has suffered. At the end of February, a planned upgrade of Hotmail users to its new Outlook.com resulted in users unable to access emails when they try to sign in via its desktop and mobile sites.

Last September, Hotmail users reported problems stopping them from accessing emails.

Users of Microsoft's web-based email services have been hit by another round of technical difficulties, as the firm's Hotmail to Outlook.com upgrades gather pace.

According to the software giant's Service Status page, Hotmail and Outlook users have experienced email access problems since yesterday evening.

The firm's cloud-based storage service SkyDrive also experienced service troubles that made it difficult for users to add, edit and remove files, but these were fixed in the earlier hours of this morning.

"You might not be able to see all your email messages. We're working to restore service right now," said the company in a Hotmail service update.

"Fixing the problem is taking longer than we hoped...We apologise for the lengthy interruption in service," it concluded.

The downtime reports are appearing on Microsoft's main Service Status page, suggesting this is a wider-scale outage than the one that blighted Hotmail users last month.

At the time of that outage, Hotmail users complained that Microsoft had not kept them updated about when the service would be resolved.

In a statement to IT Pro at the time, Microsoft said, because of the small percentage of users affected by the outage, affected users would have seen a personalised status update when they logged into their accounts.

The migration of Hotmail users to Outlook.com is expected to be completed in the summer, but has been beset with issues so far.

As reported by IT Pro last week, many users claim to have been updated without being notified first and have complained about the system's new Windows 8-like user interface.

Updated: Microsoft has since claimed yesterday's Hotmail and Outlook service problems were caused by an unexpected temperature spike in one of the firm's datacentres.

In a blog post, the company said the temperature rose in a "rapid and substantial" way following a firmware update at a core part of the physical plant.

"This is an update that had been done successfully previously, but failed in this specific instance in an unexpected way," the post stated.

"This [temperature] spike was significant enough before it was mitigated that it caused safeguards to come into place for a large number of servers in this part of the datacentre.

"These safeguards prevented access to mailboxes houses on these servers and also prevented any other pieces of our infrastructure to automatically failover and allow continued access," it added.

This article was originally published on 13 March, but updated to include details of Microsoft's response.

The migration of Hotmail users onto Microsoft's new Outlook.com email client is now in full swing, but the software giant's decision to automatically upgrade users seems to be taking many by surprise.

The switchover has been heavily publicised in the press and through email alerts from Microsoft to existing Hotmail customers, since the automatic upgrade process was first announced in February.

Even so, a quick search of the terms "Hotmail" and "Outlook" on social networking site Twitter throws up hundreds of disgruntled responses from users who claim to have logged into Hotmail, only to be greeted by the new Windows 8-like user interface of Outlook.com.

However, Microsoft has confirmed, because the Hotmail brand is being retired, switching back from Outlook.com will not be possible.

"Hotmail will be phased out by the summer and Outlook.com will be the free email service from Microsoft. As part of this transition, we've removed the option to switch back to Hotmail," thecompany stated in a recent advisory document.

This isn't the first time the Hotmail switchover has incurred the wrath of users. Back in August, when the preview version of Outlook.com was first launched, users complained they had been automatically upgraded without being asked, and had lost access to emails.

Meanwhile, existing Hotmail users that had upgraded suffered a service outage earlier this month, which prevented them from logging into their accounts. Microsoft claimed the problem only affected a small proportion of users, and that it was quickly resolved.

Microsoft's planned upgrade of Hotmail users to its new Outlook.com service hit a snag today, with numerous reports of users being locked out of their accounts.

The problem seems to be affecting existing Hotmail users that have recently upgraded to Outlook, preventing them from accessing their emails when they try to sign in via its desktop and mobile sites.

Based on IT Pro's own investigation, non-Hotmail users that have signed up for Outlook.com accounts do not appear to be affected at this time in the UK.

Hotmail and Outlook.com users have used the social networking site Twitter to express their frustration at the service trouble, which is thought to have been going on for several hours.

One user, @WillGorgeousy, wrote: "@Microsoft Looks like the migration to Outlook isn't working. Hotmail down on the web. Keep us posted on any updates."

Meanwhile, Hotmail user ‏@LouboutinJools claimed: "Absolutely nothing but grief with my Hotmail account since I [moved] to Outlook. Put it off for as long as you can."

IT Pro approached Microsoft for clarification about the number and general location of the affected users, but was still awaiting a response as this article went to press.

In the meantime, the Microsoft Support account on Twitter confirmed that "Hotmail/Outlook services are down" and that it is working to fix the issue.

The account also advises users to check its service status page, which at the time of publication reported no problems affecting Hotmail or Outlook.com.

News of the outage comes less than a week after Microsoft announced that it was stepping up its efforts to get Hotmail users to migrate to Outlook.com, as it prepares to retire its aging email brand.

This isn't the first time Hotmail users have run into problems with the move to Outlook, as many claimed to have been switched to Outlook.com without permission back in August 2012, and reported problems accessing emails.

Updated: Since IT Pro broke news of the Hotmail/Outlook outage yesterday, Microsoft have been in touch with a brief statement. In it, the company said the problem has now been fixed.

"Hotmail and Outlook.com experienced a short-term incident that caused a small percentage of customers not to be able to access their email. We worked quickly to resolve the issue, and service is now restored to normal; we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers," a company spokesperson wrote.

Whether or not yesterday's problems will affect Microsoft's reported momentum, when it comes to getting users to ditch Hotmail in favour of Outlook.com is anyone's guess, as the company recently claimed its new email client already has 60 million active users.

Hotmail users will officially start being upgraded to Microsoft's Outlook.com email service, which has been officially launched today.

The firm claims that 60 million users have signed up to Outlook.com since it was made available for preview six months ago.

David Law, director of Outlook.com product management said that Microsoft has taken feedback on board to improve the service before launching it worldwide and moving users off of Hotmail.

"Through the preview, we've heard and learned a great deal about your favourite features and how well Outlook.com is delivering on our vision for modern email," he said in the Official Microsoft blog.

"For example, millions of people are connecting Outlook.com to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to keep up-to-date on their friends' contact info, updates, photos, and Tweets. And a number of people have expressed appreciation that Outlook.com replaces advertising with the latest updates from Facebook or Twitter when they're reading email from one of their contacts."

Law claimed on average users see 60 per cent fewer ads when using Outlook.com. Microsoft plans to kick-off a major marketing campaign to promote the service and claims that it is ready to scale to a billion users.

However, not everything has gone smoothly with the planned migration. When the Outlook.com service was originally debuted in August 2012, Hotmail users vented their frustration as they were automatically upgraded without being consulted.

There appeared no way to switch back to the Hotmail service and some users were left without access to email.

Microsoft tried to remedy the situation by providing a step-by-step guide to upgrading, but it remained adament that the Hotmail brand would be phased out.

It remains to be seen if the upgrade goes smoothly. This is the second mass migration which Microsoft is working on con-currently.

The firm is also retiring its long-serving Windows Live Messenger service on 8 April and moving everyone over to the Skype platform, which it purchased in 2010 for $8.5bn.

Several Google web products, including the popular Gmail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents yesterday afternoon.

Google confirmed that "service disruptions" had affected Gmail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google's Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both consumers and businesses.

By 10:10 a.m. Pacific Time (1.10 p.m. EST), Google's Apps Dashboard monitoring service reported that Gmail and Drive service had resumed.

The company did not specify how many users were affected, or where, but the outage prompted widespread complaints on social media on both coasts in the US and other major markets, from the United Kingdom to Brazil.

Some users additionally reported the outage had affected Google Docs, the company's word-processing and spreadsheet programs, while Chrome, Google's internet browser, also crashed unexpectedly.

"We are currently experiencing an issue with some Google services," Google spokeswoman Andrea Freund said in a statement. "For everyone who is affected, we apologise for any inconvenience you may be experiencing."

Firmly entrenched in the consumer market, Gmail is one of Google's most popular and important product offerings.

The search giant, which has been pushing a corporate version of the email service and its Apps suite to businesses to compete with Microsoft, said this month that the package ill no longer be free to business customers.

Microsoft has assured Hotmail users that it will not force them off the email platform just yet, despite announcing plans to ramp up its Outlook.com advertising efforts in the coming weeks.

The software giant announced plans to rebrand Hotmail as Outlook.com at the end of July, and urged users to register and try out its new web-based email service.

The important thing for us is to get the word out there as quickly as we can.

In the early days of the new product's release, IT Pro was inundated with reports from disgruntled Hotmail users who struggled with the transition , but since then the platform has been adopted by more than 25 million users.

In an interview with The Next Web, David Law, director of product management at Microsoft's Outlook.com arm, said the company will start advertising the service to Hotmail users via inbox ads and emails this week.

"We want to make sure people know they don't have to change their email address, or their password," he explained. "Also, they won't lose any emails or calendar entries.nothing changes, except they get the new UI."

At the moment, there is no set switch-off date for Hotmail, he added, but the company is hopeful that all users will eventually make the jump to Outlook.com.

"Our goal is to get everyone over from Hotmail to Outlook. We're going to push this quite a bit, as an optional upgrade," said Law.

"At some point, we will end up moving folks over. It won't be months, but we haven't set a date for it yet...The important thing for us is to get the word out there as quickly as we can," he added.

Google has scrapped the free version of its business-focused online productivity suite, meaning SMBs will now be charged 33 per person, per year to use it.

Previously, firms with fewer than 10 employees were able to use Google Apps for Business for free.

The firm announced the move in a blog post yesterday, and stressed the charges will only apply to new Google Apps for Business users. The consumer version of the product will also remain free.

Time has shown that the free experience isn't quite right for either group.

"Google Apps started with the simple idea that Gmail could help businesses and schools work better together without the hassles of managing software and servers...[and] is [now] used by millions of businesses," wrote Clay Bavor, director of product management at Google Apps.

"When we launched the premium business version, we kept our free, basic version as well...but time has shown that the experience isn't quite right for either group."

As a result, the firm is ditching the free version, meaning all business users will now have to pay to access it.

In exchange, they will get access to a 25GB inbox, a 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee and 24 hour customer support.

"Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers...and, as before, Google Apps for Education will be available as a free service for schools and universities," added Bavor.

"With focus we'll be able to do even more for our business customers. We're excited about the opportunity to push Google Apps further so our customers can do what matters most to them," he added.

The market for enterprise social networks is maturing, and businesses should be looking to move to enterprise-grade platforms for collaboration, an industry analyst advises.

Enterprise social networks provide companies with better control and monitoring over staff activity than off the shelf consumer sites, according to research firm Ovum. But enterprise networks also provide an alternative to internal group email use, or to technologies such as Microsoft Sharepoint.

Although some companies are making effective use of sites such as Facebook and Twitter for business purposes, enterprise-specific networks such as Yammer, Salesforce's Chatter and Jive are "the other side of the coin", according to the report's author, Richard Edwards. Consumer social networks score because of their low cost and ease of use, but businesses need more functionality when it comes to deploying, and managing, social networking software than consumer sites offer.

But demand for networking technology is growing, as organisations look at ways to improve collaboration especially among more disbursed workforces. Email, the mainstay of business communications for more than a decade, is giving way to more flexible but also more feature-rich collaboration tools that inprove cooperation. "It is about 'working out loud'," said Edwards. As workforces become more scattered, businesses are looking for a fabric to reconnect all the different parts."

And a combination of cloud-based business models and free to "freemium" or paid-for plans is also spurring take up of enterprise social networks, with companies now starting to replace collaboration tools that, according to Edwards, are four or even five years out of date.

"CIOs do have to demonstrate the business value of these networks, and prove it is not a fad," he said. "But enterprise collaboration software has been clunky, and businesses have struggled to keep it up to date. The idea you can have that functionality in the cloud, for the price of a coffee and a croissant, is very attractive."

Ovum believes that the enterprise social networking market is currently worth some US$500 million, but predicts that the market could be worth $10 billion.

A number of Hotmail users were locked out of their email accounts by a login glitch earlier today.

The problem had been reported by a slew of Hotmail users on social networking site Twitter, who after inputting their username and password claimed to have been either redirected to the login screen again or faced with a blank, white screen.

"Is Hotmail down? I cant access my email on my Android app and the webpage is not available," said @XboxSONJ2012

"Hotmail is down again, just goes to show how out-dated they are and how poor there service is. Switching everything over to Gmail later," added @AshleyLLoyd5.

Microsoft's live status screen confirmed that Hotmail, Messenger and the firm's cloud storage service SkyDrive were experiencing unspecified technical difficulties earlier.

Meanwhile, according to a status report on website uptime monitor Downrightnow.com, Hotmail had been suffering problems since around 11am today.

At the time of writing, the problems appeared to have been fixed.

In a statement to IT Pro, Microsoft said: "Some Microsoft services experienced a short-term issue that caused a small number of customers not to be able to access their accounts.

"We worked quickly to resolve the issue, and service is now restored to normal. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this caused our customers."

Microsoft has issued some further guidance to help ease Hotmail users through the transition to Outlook.com, after many admitted struggling with the switchover.

The firm announced Outlook.com as the successor to its consumer webmail service Hotmail last week, as it fights to win back users from Google's Gmail platform.

Since then, Microsoft has been encouraging Hotmail users to try a preview version of Outlook.com, with seemingly mixed results.

As reported by IT Pro on Friday, Hotmail users have been flooding the software giant's web forums with reports of problems they have encountered since switching to Outlook.com.

In the first few days alone, we've seen several million people upgrade to Outlook.com.

For instance, some users claim their accounts have been upgraded to Outlook.com without their permission, while others are struggling to access the new site at all.

Many have also reported losing access to their old Hotmail emails post-upgrade.

IT Pro has also been inundated with complaints from disgruntled Outlook.com users, with several readers calling on Microsoft to ditch the venture and keep Hotmail.

"Having used proper, professional Outlook I thought to myself, "what could go wrong?' Well, almost everything," claimed one reader, calling themselves Blue5creen0fDeath.

"[It] looks clunky, hides away the option to change back to Hotmail, keeps opening up new windows [and] causes confusion."

When IT Pro approached Microsoft for a response, the firm's press team directed us to a blog post, which contains a step-by-step guide to moving from Hotmail to Outlook.com.

The blog post was published on Friday afternoon and claims "several million" people have upgraded to Outlook.com since it was first unveiled.

In it, users are urged to think very carefully about adopting an Outlook.com address, with the software giant stating that it is a move that is difficult to undo.

End users are also warned that switching to an Outlook.com address means they will have to login with their new email address and password to use other Microsoft services, including Xbox and Windows Phone.

"If you use a Windows Phone, you will need to reset your Windows Phone to factory settings, and then set it back up with the new account name," the blog states.

"You will lose all [your] personal data when you do this, so make sure you have [it]backed up."

The blog post does not provide any guidance to users that may have encountered post-switch problems, much to the chagrin of some of the site's visitors, who have left feedback in the comments section.

However, Microsoft is encouraging users to give them direct feedback about the problems they may be having.

"We've built Outlook.com to be modern email for the next billion inboxes. We hope you like it, and we want to hear from you," the blog post concludes.

"Our product team uses your feedback to make the product even better. So, tell us what you think, and thanks for using Outlook.com."

Hotmail users have been left fuming at Microsoft after being automatically upgraded to an Outlook.com email address without asking.

There have been over 55 pages worth of complaints in the Microsoft Answers forum and IT Pro readers have also been in touch to confirm they are having problems.

There are four major issues being reported:

1) Some users have been upgraded without their permission. The "Go Back to Hotmail" option does not seem to work for everyone.

Microsoft has confirmed once an email is switched to Outlook, it cannot be changed back.

"Unfortunately there is no way to rename to an existing account. This is something we're investigating for future improvements," Microsoft said in the forum.

2) Not everyone has been able to upgrade to Outlook.com with some users being greeted with a blank screen and others with error messages.

3) Most worryingly, some users have been unable to see their old emails from their Hotmail account after upgrading.

4) Problems are also being reported with the Hotmail Human Interactive Proof (HIP) validation process. Errors are appearing saying the characters don't match with the ones in the 'picture'. Microsoft has recognised this problem in the forum and is working to fix this issue.

IT Pro readers have been complaining that there is no way to return to their old email.

"I tried backing out, but have found my old Hotmail account - which I have had for over twenty years - has been de-activated so that I can't send or receive email from it in Windows Live," noted Obray.

"Even after I clicked on Go Back to Hotmail, it has still left my Hotmail account email in a subfolder to the inbox. This is really disappointing. I think MS needed to think this out a bit more before sending people down this path."

Members of the IT Pro team have had similar experiences. Our Editor and Technical Editor had their Hotmail and Live accounts upgraded automatically. However, old emails have been transferred over to the new inbox and any messages sent to the old addresses do appear, which isn't the case for everyone.

Meanwhile, the News Editor's attempts to revert back to Hotmail resulted in her machine crashing. The Editor on our sister title Cloud Pro managed to log into Hotmail and was given the choice of whether or not to upgrade.

It appears that if you are logged into any of your Microsoft email accounts and go to the Outlook.com website, your ID will automatically be converted.

The safest way to keep your existing account appears to be to log out of all accounts, then proceed to Outlook.com to sign up as a new user.

Although, readers concerned about any of the issues raised above, might want to consider holding off on upgrading for now.

Microsoft has been informed of these issues, but is yet to respond.

Microsoft has revamped its webmail tool ahead of the launch of Windows 8. The Outlook.com preview comes with a number of notable changes.

What are the main changes?

The most noticeable change is the interface, which has been stripped back significantly. The standard menu options are found on the left and provide access to key folders such as Inbox, Drafts, Sent and Deleted.

A new addition is the "Quick Views" menu, which automatically collates emails which have document attachments, photos and shipping updates. This is a useful feature and will help to narrow down search menus.

Once you have clicked on an email context sensitive options appear along the top of the page allowing you to perform actions including Reply, Delete and Move.

Are Metro Tiles included?

Microsoft has added in Metro tiles, which will be found in Windows 8. Clicking on the arrow next to the Outlook.com logo in the top left corner will bring up tiles which provide access to Mail, People, Calendar and SkyDrive.

Can you preview documents within Outlook?

Yes. Users will be able to preview documents thanks to the integration of Office Web Apps. This will make it possible to view and edit Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote documents directly from your inbox.

How does the social networking interaction work?

It is possible to connect to the major social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. This allows you to import all your contacts and start conversations directly from within the Outlook pane.

It is also possible to tweet users or write on a Facebook wall directly from Outlook. Simply go to the People menu, click on a contact to interact.

What about Skype?

Skype integration is not yet available, but Microsoft plans to launch a plugin soon. The plan is to allow users to carry out video calling from within Outlook, even if they don't have the program installed on their desktop.

Are there any business benefits?

The webmail service will provide familiarity to business users who use the desktop Outlook client. For example it is also possible to set reading panes so you can preview emails.

The ability to sync contacts across social networking sites is valuable and Outlook's "Quick View" feature which pulls in emails will be invaluable for those who receive hundreds of emails per day.

Skype integration will be useful for those who work remotely or travel and need to contact family, friends or colleagues.

Should you upgrade?

In a word yes. The simple interface looks great and the integration of social networking means you can sync all your contacts easily.

Outlook.com is available to try now. Having been logged into our Windows Live account, we found simply typing Outlook.com into our address bar took us directly to the new client.

Hotmail users can click "Upgrade" in the options menu. Users should still be able to send/receive email from @hotmail.com or @msn.com or @live.com addresses.

Alternatively, it is also possible to set up a dedicated @outlook.com address.

UPDATE 03/08/12, 4.30pm: Some users have experienced issues with automatic upgrading or confusion around the changes as reported by IT Pro here. Microsoft has yet to respond to the matters raised in the story/related user forums.

Microsoft made a number of changes to the next version of Outlook, with early indications suggesting the email client has been optimised for use on tablets.

The changes to Outlook 15 will bring it more in line with its Windows Phone counterpart, according to Microsoft insider, Paul Thurrott.

"It's pretty clear that Outlook is being brought in line with Microsoft's other email and calendar clients, and with the mobile versions in Windows Phone in particular. The Contacts module has been renamed to the more consistent People, for example, and Outlook now connects natively to new calendar types," he noted on the Supersite for Windows blog.

A key addition is the a feature known as "Peeks", which is designed to lets users see more information from other apps in Outlook without having to leave the current page.

The Outlook component links (Mail, Calendar, People, Tasks) have been moved from the sidebar to the bottom of the page. When you mouse over a link, a pop-up window with a "peek" of the link will appear. The peek displays important information about that link. For example, the "calendar" peek would pop-up with a mini-calendar and an update on events for that day.

When emailing a particular contact, a "people" link will appear at the bottom of the window. This will allow a preview of that person's Facebook page as well as their Twitter or LinkedIn accounts.

Email replies are also set to be more touch screen friendly. When responding to an email in a previous version of Outlook, a new pop-up window would appear. In Outlook 15, replies are inline in the area normally reserved for the reading pane.

Both the inline replies and the "peeks" features are likely to benefit mobile users as changing between windows on a touch screen or tablet can be frustrating.

Other changes include the absence of the Outlook Connector. Hotmail accounts previously required this separate add-on while social networking integration required another add-on called the Social Connector. These features are now built into Outlook 15 and Hotmail and social networking accounts can be synched with Outlook via the accounts page located in the sidebar.

Another convenient addition to Outlook 15 is the weather bar that appears in the calendar view.

Overall the system still runs the same way, with users still have to sign into an email account and enter a password twice just like the older versions.

"It's an early hint that, for all the surface changes, not much has really changed," Thurrott added.

Hillingdon Council today announced it would be moving over to a cloud model, using Google's Apps for Business.

The local authority first announced plans to pioneer the Government move to the cloud in the summer, following a successful server virtualisation implementation and talk of desktop virtualisation project as well.

However, it only released a statement today confirming the Software as a Service (SaaS) model from Google for productivity apps was its next step on the cloud journey, with claims of almost 3 million in savings over the next four years as a result.

"Going with Google makes the most sense for Hillingdon economically and it will enable us to realise the tremendous opportunities afforded by cloud computing," said Councillor Jonathan Bianco, the cabinet member for finance, property and business services at Hillingdon.

"Doing this means we're ahead of the curve in anticipating the changes in technology over the coming years."

The migration process will be carried out by Google App reseller Cloudreach. Unfortunately this is where the pay as you go model falls down, as the company won a tender for a four year contract with the council. There is also the option to extend by two one year periods.

But all 3,500 employees at the council should me moved to the new web-based system early next year, which Hillingdon hopes will help with better collaboration in-house, as well as giving more opportunities for remote working.

"Simply, it makes both financial and business transformational sense to make the change," added Bianco.

Other local councils have run pilots of cloud schemes, such as Warwickshire County Council, which won Cloud Pro's Cloud Initiative of the Year award for its implementation of Gmail.

However, Hillingdon claims to be the first council to sign up to a full on contract and throw themselves fully into cloud SaaS.

Google has created an updated version of Gmail, now available to every user.

The internet giant said the latest version of its email client will be rolling out to everyone in the next few days, but it is available to preview now.

The new Gmail features brighter colors, larger tabs for conversations, amongst many other features.

A dropdown menu on the search bar allows for advanced searching, making it faster to find what users are looking for within their mail. Users can also create filters for any search with this new panel.

Conversation has been redesigned, allowing reading through email threads to look simpler. Profile pictures will pop-up next to users contacts, adding a social element as well as making it easier to see who said what.

"We also stripped out as much as possible so you can focus on communicating with your friends and colleagues," said Google user experience designer Jason Cornwell, in a blog post.

Since users may access their account from a variety of screen sizes and devices, the elements on the screen will now automatically adjust based on the form factor being used.

Google has also added a drop down menu to change the type of display density, including "comfortable, cozy, and compact" settings based on users' preference.

The navigation panel on the left keeps labels and chat contacts in view at all times, but users will be able to resize the labels and chat areas on their own. The arrow keys also help users navigate around the page.

With the help of iStockPhoto, HD themes have been rebuilt to enable high-resolution screens. Users who have a particular theme enabled will see an automatic update of it when Gmail is officially carried over to its new look.

Below is a video outlining the changes: