Emails are the foundation of business communication. They carry offers, orders, invoices, internal coordination and ultimately money. Yet many companies treat their mail infrastructure as a side issue. “It will work” until the first important message disappears into the spam folder, a phishing email slips through or an authorization error creates a security breach.
This is exactly where the underestimated cost trap lies: small technical mistakes can have enormous consequences. From lost revenue to a complete standstill of operations.
Typical Weaknesses
For emails to reliably reach their destination the right technical foundation is essential. At the core three protocols play a role: SMTP, IMAP and POP3. SMTP ensures that messages are sent, IMAP keeps mailboxes synchronized across different devices and POP3 downloads emails but often removes them from the server - which is hardly practical in modern environments.
In practice, the real challenges usually don’t arise from the technology itself but from incorrect or incomplete configuration. Typical examples include:
- Missing SPF, DKIM and DMARC entries: Emails are not delivered or end up in spam. At the same time the risk increases that attackers misuse the company’s domain for phishing.
- Insufficient filtering: Either legitimate customer emails are blocked or dangerous messages reach the inbox unchecked.
- Lack of centralized control: Without a central mail queue (e.g., in Odoo or other ERP integrations) transparency is lacking, requests get lost or are processed twice.
- Weak authorization concepts: Mailboxes are tied directly to employees and access remains active after they leave = an open door for abuse.
From Practice
A mid-sized company lost a six-figure request for proposal because the email landed in the spam folder due to faulty DKIM configuration. Nobody noticed, the customer waited in vain and awarded the contract to a competitor.
In another case an employee clicked on a phishing email that looked deceptively genuine. The attacker gained access to mailboxes and sensitive data. The result: days of downtime, high recovery costs and severe loss of customer trust.
Such cases are not exceptions – they happen every day and hit exactly those companies that believe their mail systems are “secure enough.”
Our Recommendations
To avoid these risks what’s needed is not only regular awareness training but also a solid overall concept. This includes:
- a clean setup of SPF, DKIM and DMARC to ensure reliable delivery and prevent abuse.
- secure integration of Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace according to proven standards.
- a central mail queue that provides transparency and ensures that no request gets lost.
- clear role and access concepts supported by the right technical infrastructure.
- employee training, combined with infrastructure that reliably detects phishing emails.
Important: These points are not isolated measures but must be seen as part of a bigger picture. Only then will the email infrastructure function reliably and securely.
Conclusion
Emails today must do more than just transport messages. They are part of business processes – whether in CRM, ticketing systems or accounting. But this is precisely where the biggest challenges often arise. Different interfaces, authentication methods and small system inconsistencies quickly lead to duplicate processes or data errors.
The good news: with the right expertise these risks can be eliminated from the outset. This is exactly where we come in. As your IT partner we make sure the technology works, processes run smoothly and your company is not slowed down by spam, phishing or misconfigurations.
