I've read the help pages and other guidance on subjective questions, I am trying to keep this question as objective as possible, so I'm going to ask up front that people stick to backing any response with facts, first-hand experiences or examples.
My work is blocking email services, they claim for security reasons,
At work You are correct, we block SMTP and other email services to unknown servers from the Internal network as a security precaution.
That said we can make exceptions so if you can send me:
- The server(s) involved
- The ports you need (25,143,110 etc)
What are the main concerns when deciding to whether to allow these services?
My thoughts so far are not very objective, hence why I need some more professional help;
Social engineering? People browsing non-work emails may have poor spam filters and inadvertently click on links to malicious websites, however I don't have any objective evidence that this would be a valid concern for the company... at least any more so than people browsing the web (which is totally unfiltered)
I don't believe it to be an attempt to boost productivity as social media websites are not blocked, much better targets for employee time wasting these days.
They haven't by default made exceptions for the most common email services, suggesting they still mistrust those and want to discourage email use as much as possible.