Cloud email keeps mailboxes on a provider platform rather than on a mail server the organization runs in its own server rooms.
Identity, forwarding rules, and retention become shared duties, because a stolen mailbox is both a provider incident and your incident.
How it works
Staff can read mail from many devices, which is why sign in strength and device expectations matter more than the location of the server.
A missed setting, such as open forwarding or a legacy protocol left enabled, can quietly copy every message to an outsider.
Treat the provider console as a privileged system with few administrators, logged changes, and recovery codes stored offline.
When you leave a provider, know how you export mail and how you will prove deletion rather than assuming the contract handles it.
Concrete examples
- An employee adds a forwarding rule to an outside address, and months of invoices leave before anyone reviews the rule.
- A shared mailbox password is typed into a ticket, and several people can send as the finance address.
- A region outage at the provider stops contract negotiation until the continuity plan's alternate channel is used.
Protective measures
- Require strong sign in and alerts on new forwarding, delegation, and mailbox export for every payment related mailbox.
- Limit who can administer the provider console, and review that administrator list whenever staff change roles.
- Turn off legacy access methods you do not need, and record the business reason for any exception.
- Write down export and retention duties in the contract, and test a restore before you actually need one.