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By Cian Fitzpatrick | 25th November 2025
In our last Chapter we spoke about how Enterprise solutions need security that scales.
It is easy to think email security is purely about filters, firewalls and alerts. And, of course, these elements matter. However, true protection goes far deeper. It is about ensuring communication keeps moving even when individual systems or providers experience issues.
Although we seldom give email a second thought, no organisation can function if email stops working. Email continuity is quite simply business continuity. It’s for this reason that this principle has guided our infrastructure design from day one.
For more than two decades, our focus has been to keep email flowing securely and without interruption. What began as redundancy within a single data centre has grown into something far more advanced. Today Topsec’s stack infrastructure operates independent processing stacks in Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt and Stockholm. Each stack runs on diverse cloud providers and keeps its own copy of customer data and rule sets, allowing it to operate even if the central core is unreachable. This is how we can guarantee our clients’ email will keep flowing and their business keeps moving even if there is a disruption.
During onboarding, customer data and rule sets are synchronised across all stacks. If the Amsterdam stack among Topsec’s stack infrastructure, experienced a temporary issue, Paris or Frankfurt would continue scanning and delivering mail without any interruption for end users. This independence is reinforced by a security framework that operates beneath the surface. It includes dual firewalls, intrusion detection, centralised logging, forensic analysis and continuous monitoring of cloud performance, mail queues and capacity.
Scaling a business increases demand on every part of an email security platform. Many providers stretch existing infrastructure and eventually run into bottlenecks. Our approach avoids this entirely. Instead of loading more traffic onto existing stacks, we deploy new independent stacks whenever capacity needs to increase. As each one is cloud-agnostic, we select the strongest providers in each region and minimise dependency on any single supplier. If one data centre has issues, the others continue operating normally. This modular design is one of the key reasons we consistently deliver industry-leading uptime.
While we’re focusing on infrastructure here, continuity is the thread that ties everything together. The distributed design of our stacks is what delivers continuity in the first place. When one component falters, another immediately steps in. When major cloud providers experience downtime, Topsec’s stack infrastructure is already prepared.
It’s also worth noting that when we talk about downtime or outages, we’re talking about time as well as money. If your communication systems are down, you’re losing revenue and could face penalty clauses. Business continuity is a commercial matter.
|
Provider
|
Uptime (%)
|
Downtime (%)
|
Continuity Approach
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
Topsec Cloud Solutions
|
99.999
|
0.001
|
Native always-on
|
|
Microsoft
|
99.9–99.95
|
0.05–0.1
|
Azure failover/regional
|
|
Proofpoint
|
~99.9
|
~0.1
|
Cloud failover/redundancy
|
|
Barracuda
|
~99.95
|
~0.05
|
|
|
Abnormal Security
|
99.9–99.95
|
0.05–0.1
|
99.9% SLA, multiple regions
|
In the past year, there have been a number of high-profile cloud and email outages. All of these incidents highlight the need to distribute risk across multiple providers. Relying on a single point of failure leaves any organisation vulnerable when disruptions occur. And they do occur!
Topsec’s stack infrastructure delivers one of the highest levels of email security continuity in Ireland, operating at 99.999% uptime. In real terms, that means only a few minutes of possible downtime per year. This is far above the continuity levels typically achieved by global competitors.
Most major providers fall between 99.9% and 99.95% availability, which can translate to several hours or even tens of hours of interruption annually. Microsoft has experienced regional service issues that place its actual availability in this range. Proofpoint is reported to operate around 99.9% based on independent monitoring. Barracuda tends to perform closer to 99.95%, while Abnormal Security sits between 99.9% and 99.95% despite its 99.9% SLA.
Although many providers advertise strong reliability in Ireland, real-world incidents often reveal dips below their stated uptime. Topsec’s consistently higher continuity sets it apart, offering Irish businesses a more reliable and resilient email security service.
There’s evidence to conclude then that Topsec significantly outperforms the main international players by keeping downtime to an absolute minimum.
No matter what type of business you run, it’s a guarantee that email sits at the centre of it. Furthermore, it’s no exaggeration to say that if email stops, business stops. Our stack-based architecture is designed to prevent that from happening. With independent environments, diverse cloud providers and resilience built into every layer, email continues to flow even when external systems fail.
For our customers, this means confidence and reliability that scales with them. If you would like to understand how this infrastructure can support your organisation’s real-world continuity, please contact our team.
