How an Email Security Protects Your Company From Breaches and Data Leaks

Email is one of the foremost prevalent shapes of communication in trade. Tragically, it can too be a major source of cyber-attacks for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a healthcare organization sharing patients’ medical records or a manufacturer with product roadmaps and intellectual property, your email is a goldmine for hackers. Fortunately, email security best practices can help protect your company from breaches and data leaks.

Require Two-Factor Authentication

Email is the backbone of most business communication, but it’s also one of the most popular vehicles for cybercrime. Phishing, business email compromise (BEC), and accounts payable scams are constant threats to businesses of all sizes. Fortunately, several effective email security best practices can significantly reduce the risk of these attacks. It includes using strong passwords, changing passwords frequently, and requiring two-factor authentication (2FA) on all important accounts. It is much more troublesome for awful on-screen characters to break, which makes it a vital portion of any business’s email security procedure. Another key step is to encrypt all email messages between the organization and any third-party inbound and outbound recipients. Encryption converts plaintext into ciphertext, meaning anyone who intercepts the message cannot read it. It could be a great hone to require workers to get to mail as it were on company-approved and trusted gadgets to constrain the potential for gadget altering and malware contaminations.

Encryption

Whether your commerce could be a worldwide endeavor or a little neighborhood shop, email is basic for communicating with workers and clients. Unfortunately, this popular communication medium is also a common attack vector for cyber-criminals and hackers. Email encryption is a key security practice that protects email data by encrypting messages before they are sent. It ensures that the intended recipient can only read the message and prevents common threats, including phishing attacks, BEC (Business Email Compromise), and malware infections. It also provides more control, such as revoking access to emails sent to the wrong recipient and seeing when a message was opened and by whom.

Passwords are the foundation of account safety, but too often, businesses use easy-to-guess passwords that are easily hacked. Additionally, employees frequently re-use their passwords for other accounts, allowing hackers to infiltrate all the information protected by that one password. Implementing a secure password policy, encouraging good password hygiene practices, and requiring multi-factor authentication can all help improve your email security. However, the best way to guarantee your email is secure is to utilize a solution with end-to-end encryption. This approach is different than traditional tech-focused approaches because it allows you to protect what’s being attacked, not just how it’s being attacked. You can contact Fortinet to learn more about their email security solutions.

Single Sign-On

Email is a common business communication method, and it can contain sensitive information. Cybercriminals know this, so ensuring that emails between you and your clients are secure is vital. It will help prevent phishing, spamming and data breaches that could compromise your customers’ security and privacy. One of the driving ways to guarantee your company’s mail is to utilize single sign-on. This way, each employee will have a unique username and password for each account and must log in from the right device each time. It will help reduce the risk of cyberattacks since hackers will have fewer user names and passwords to try. It’ll spare you time and cash on offering assistance work area back. Another great way to protect your email is by encrypting it. Some email service providers automatically encrypt messages, which makes them more difficult to hack. If yours does not, there are third-party sites that can encrypt emails for you. Another important email security practice requires multi-factor authentication (MFA). It’ll include an additional layer of security and anticipate numerous assaults. It includes preventing employees from using their devices for work. It will also stop them from accessing their work email on public Wi-Fi networks, which can threaten email security.

Data Backups

While email encryption helps prevent hackers and scammers from infiltrating your company’s data and intellectual property, it isn’t the only way to protect yourself. Backups are an essential security practice that ensures the integrity of your information in the event of a cyberattack. As phishing schemes become more sophisticated and realistic, users must remain vigilant to avoid falling prey. It’s best to encourage employees to refrain from opening, responding to, clicking links or opening attachments from suspicious emails. It is why many companies incorporate phishing awareness training into their cybersecurity education programs and policies. Remembering employees to refrain from using their devices to log into their company’s email accounts is also important. Even if they have a strong, unique password and two-step authentication setup, using a personal device to access their company’s account can open them up to hackers who may install keylogger software to steal credentials and information. Additionally, employees should not log into their email on public Wi-Fi because hackers can easily access unencrypted wireless networks to exploit vulnerabilities. To further secure your email account, you should also require passwords to be complex with a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, and avoid using words, dates or IDs.