How do you align your email security goals with your business objectives and priorities?

1 Assess your email risks

The first step is to identify and evaluate the email threats that your organization faces. These may include phishing, malware, spam, data breaches, spoofing, impersonation, and more. You should also consider the impact of these threats on your business operations, finances, legal obligations, and reputation. By assessing your email risks, you can prioritize the most critical and urgent ones, and allocate your resources accordingly.

2 Define your email security metrics and KPIs

The next step is to establish your email security metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). These are the measurable and quantifiable values that demonstrate the effectiveness of your email security strategy. Common email security metrics and KPIs include the delivery rate, open rate, click rate, spam rate, compromise rate, and security incidents. It’s important to align these metrics with your business goals, such as improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs, or complying with regulations. This will help you track progress and make informed decisions about your email security strategy.

3 Choose your email security tools and solutions

The third step is to select the email security tools and solutions that best suit your needs and budget. These can include email encryption for protecting content and attachments, email authentication for verifying the identity of senders and recipients, email filtering for screening emails based on criteria, email archiving for storing emails for future reference, and email monitoring for tracking activity and performance. It is important to take into account your email risks, metrics, KPIs, technical capabilities, and user preferences when making a selection.

4 Train your email users and staff

The fourth step is to train your email users and staff on how to use your email security tools and solutions, as well as follow best practices for email security. Topics to cover include creating and managing strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, recognizing and avoiding phishing, malware, spam, and other email scams, encrypting, authenticating, filtering, archiving, and monitoring emails securely, reporting and responding to email security incidents or suspicious activities, and updating and patching email software and devices regularly. You should provide clear instructions, guidelines, policies, and feedback on email security. Additionally, it is important to test their knowledge periodically and reward their compliance and improvement.

5 Review and improve your email security plan

The final step is to review and improve your email security plan regularly and continuously. You should measure and evaluate your email security metrics and KPIs, and compare them with your benchmarks and targets. You should also collect and analyze feedback from your email users, staff, customers, partners, and regulators. You should identify and address any gaps, weaknesses, or issues in your email security plan, and implement any changes or enhancements that are necessary or beneficial.

You should review and improve your email security plan at least once a year, or more frequently if there are significant changes in your business environment, objectives, or priorities.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?