Email Security Best Practices to Safeguard Your Business in 2023

Previously, email security best practices could be easily summarized: use strong passwords, block spammers, don't trust offers that are too good to be true and verify requests even from trusted sources. Today, email is critical to business success, and the preferred method of communication requires a stronger set of best practices to protect against costly cyber threats such as ransomware and business email compromise (BEC). As threats continue to emerge, inadequately secured email can put your business at great risk. This article will discuss several simple methods to implement to improve your business’s email security strategy to defend against damaging cyberattacks and data breaches, 90% of which are initiated via email.

Small Businesses Are Even More Vulnerable

Organizations are getting hit with ransomware now more than ever, multiple times, and often by the same ransomware variant. Many businesses have the mentality that they are too small to be the victim of ransomware, however, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are actually often targeted. This is because attackers recognize and take advantage of the fact that these companies often have smaller security teams and tend to have limited budgets for cyber defense. Data reveals that most small businesses are not able to recover from an attack, and 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of getting hit with ransomware. Other statistics concerning SMBs include:

• 46% of all cyber breaches impact businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees.
• 61% of SMBs were the target of a Cyberattack in 2021.
• Malware is the most common type of cyberattack aimed at small businesses.
• 82% of ransomware attacks in 2021 were against companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.?
• 37% of companies hit by ransomware had fewer than 100 employees.
• Small businesses receive the highest rate of targeted malicious emails at 1 in 323.
• Employees of small businesses experience 350% more social engineering attacks than those at larger enterprises.
• 87% of small businesses have customer data that could be compromised in an attack.?
• 27% of small businesses with no cybersecurity protections at all collect customers’ credit card info.

Simple Tips to Improve Your Cybersecurity Posture

As email is one of the most commonly used attack vectors by cybercriminals, it is critical an organization and its employees follow email security best practices, such as:?

Spam Filter

A spam filter is a program that detects unsolicited, unwanted and infected emails and prevents messages from making their way into a user's inbox. Like other types of filtering programs, a spam filter looks for specific criteria to determine whether an email is malicious or not.

Email Encryption

Encryption is the process of scrambling information so that only authorized users can access it. SSL certificates are an encryption-based technology that helps secure the communication between sender and receiver. Users should also consider implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, three protocols that are highly effective in combating sender fraud.

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

MFA security requires multiple authentication methods to confirm the user’s identity for logins and other transactions. MFA combines the user’s credentials to confirm that the user logging into the account is the owner. The credentials include what you know (knowledge), what you have (possession), and what you are (inheritance).

Back-Up Important Files?

Organizations should back up critical files frequently and automatically to reduce the potential damage of an attack. To protect backups from malicious attacks, supplement backups with additional copies kept in multiple locations; isolate backups and test backups frequently. Perform restoration exercises on a regular basis to identify any issues or vulnerabilities.

Training Employees

Training your employees is a valuable investment that helps prevent cyber attacks from occurring. Security awareness training teaches employees to understand vulnerabilities and threats to business operations.?

Stronger Methods of Email Protection

With proper preparation, you can drastically lower the cost and impact of an attack. Implementing even stronger practices can reduce an organization’s exposure to email threats and minimize potential damage. This includes:

Strengthen Your Email Security Strategy with Proactive Additional Layers of Protection

Many businesses continue to make the mistake of relying on endpoint security alone to safeguard users and key business assets. Endpoint security is a good first start, but it is ineffective in combating sophisticated and evolving threats without additional layers of proactive protection accompanied by expert, ongoing system monitoring, maintenance, and support. This protection must be able to anticipate and learn from emerging attacks and offer the real-time cybersecurity business insights required to improve decision-making and policy enforcement.?

Protect Email With Sender Authentication

Sender authentication prevents phishing attacks and protects email accounts against other threats like email spoofing and business email compromise (BEC) by providing a way to verify that an email actually comes from who it claims to be from. This is possible with the help of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) specifies a method for preventing sender address forgery. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) verifies that an email message was not faked or altered. DMARC unifies mechanisms used in SPF and DKIM, allowing domain owners to declare how they would like an email to be handled if it fails an authorization test.?

Invest in Fully-Managed Email Security Services

In order to fortify business email against today’s most advanced attacks, it is essential that organizations have a fully-managed email security solution in place, designed to protect against the specific threats each individual business faces, to provide the level of expertise and support needed to safeguard sensitive data and other key assets in this modern digital threat environment. With an intuitive, multi-layered design, your solution must offer various layers of security that detect and block threats in real-time and build on each other to provide more effective protection.

Keep Learning

Now more than ever, businesses cannot afford a weak email security strategy. Implementing a comprehensive email security system can help prevent advanced threats, such as targeted spear phishing, and ransomware.

• Learn more about effectively protecting your business from ransomware.
• Improve your email security posture to protect against attacks by following best practices.
• Keeping the integrity of your email safe requires securing the cloud with spam filtering and enterprise-grade anti-spam services.
• Get the latest updates on how to stay safe online.