Why You Should Boost Your Email Security

Your company’s email is one of its most important pieces of technology, and since that is true for nearly every business, it is unfortunately one of the most utilized attack vectors used by cybercriminals. Most businesses don’t understand just how vulnerable they are if their email isn’t properly secured and do their best to keep their employees trained on how to spot potential scams. 

The Importance of Email Security

The reason you’ll want to invest in your email’s security is best summed up by the fact that your business faces near-constant threats. The fact is that all it takes is one malicious email to get into the wrong inbox and your business is dealing with a full-on catastrophe. If your business has unsecured email accounts, it is basically an open invitation for malicious entities.

What can you do to enhance the security of your email accounts? Let’s look at a few things:

Identifying Phishing Attacks

The first thing you can do to secure your business’ email accounts is to properly train your employees about how to identify phishing attacks. A phishing attack is when cybercriminals send deceptive emails that are built to seem authentic, and by design, get people to act. They typically do this by having them click on a link in the body of the email or download an attachment to the email. Typically, these attacks are simply phishing for access to a network attached account where the cybercriminal can steal data or deploy malware. 

You need to train them to:

• Check the sender - Do you recognize the sender and the address that the email comes from? If not, you will want to verify with the would-be sender before interacting with the email. 
• Check the links - By hovering your mouse over the links in the email, you can see the URL that the hyperlink goes to. If you don’t recognize it or it doesn’t match the text of the email, don’t click on it. 
• Check punctuation and grammar - Phishing emails tend to have grammar and punctuation issues that you would never see in professional correspondence. Many attacks come from foreign countries where English isn’t the first language.
• Take it slow - Phishing emails tend to create panic for users and that leads to impulsive action and then disaster. Train your employees to take it slow and if they find anything that doesn’t make complete sense in an email to report it to the IT staff. Better safe than sorry. 

If your employees know how to spot probable phishing attacks and when to report suspect emails, you will be far ahead of most businesses when it comes to email security.

Securing Your Email Backup

If you didn’t know already, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (STMP) server enables the sending and receiving of emails. When someone in your organization sends an email, it is stored in the STMP server in plain text format. These backups are typically unprotected and available for access by anyone. That’s why it is important to add a layer of security—typically through encryption—to your email backups to ensure they are locked down. 

Tighten Down Email Security

There are sophisticated tools that help secure email servers with layers upon layers of security. These solutions, including dynamic spam filtering, can detect and block malicious emails. Tools such as password-protected attachments scans, page impersonation attack detection, and domain background checks can keep your organization’s email solution secure and mitigate the risks it could have to your network. 

At Network Solutions Unlimited, we can help you get the secure email solution you need, help you plan your training, and much, much more. Give us a call at (217) 428-6449 today to have a conversation with one of our knowledgeable consultants.