The Nuts & Bolts of Email Security
As reported by CIO.com, cyberattackers execute 90% of cyberattacks occur via email. If you would like to know more about securing your email, please read on.
Organizations that fall victim to scams initiated through email incur financial losses, damage to their reputation, data loss, and downtime to their operations.
Email security is a general term that describes all procedures and practices for securing email accounts and their content. Email security has many components, such as tools and techniques that protect email services. These techniques and tools may include multi-factor authentication, employee security training, password protection, encryption, and more.
The Importance of Email Security
There are several reasons why you should secure your email. Your emails usually contain sensitive information: Messages in your email system may contain confidential information such as sensitive company records, bank account statements and your clients’ personal information.
Some organizations spend a lot of resources on network and endpoint security but disregard email security. This reality may be the reason why cybercriminals use the vulnerability of emails to launch devastating attacks.
Email Security Threats
Email security risks include the following:
Phishing and Spoofing: These attacks use social engineering techniques. In spoofing, the sender pretends to be someone else. Phishing involves the sender attaching malicious downloads that recipients download into your network or links to compromised sites. For example, an attacker can use “[email protected]” to target your employees if “[email protected]” is one of your supplier’s email address. The spoofed email had an ‘l’ while the one with an ‘i’ is the correct address of your supplier. Some of your employees may miss this crucial distinction. Email spoofing is possible because providers do not build domain verification into the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) that supports emails.
Email Security Gaps: Your email service provider may misconfigure your email services, leaving them susceptible to unauthorized access.
Domain Squatting: Cybercriminals may register, buy, and sell a brand’s email domain. Attackers can use the domain to target the organization’s employees or clients.
Client-Side Attacks: Cyberattacks can happen when a compromised client’s device accesses your email system.
Malicious Files: You can download email attachments infected with malware.
Ransomware: Attackers can infect your system through compromised email attachments or links and ask you to pay to regain control or access your data.
Spear Phishing And BEC (Business Email Compromise) Emails: Cybercriminals can bypass your security precautions and take advantage of the end user’s unawareness to attack your system.
How Secure Is Your Email?
Email is one of your most effective communication platforms as it is highly accessible to enable open communication inside and outside your organization. Setting up your email can however, make it vulnerable to cyberattacks. Cybercriminals can use misconfigurations they find to impersonate senders or intercept your messages.
Your email service provider may have measures to safeguard your communications. You need to take additional steps to secure your email system. Your exchanges will be vulnerable to cyberattacks if you do not take the extra measures necessary to protect your emails.
Email Security Best Practices and Tips
These action items will enhance your email security:
- Conduct regular cybersecurity training and simulation: These sessions should be conducted every few months and you should also ensure that every member of your staff takes part in them. Your staff should be updated on new schemes and their memories refreshed on the more common cyberthreats. Email security training helps your employees discover tricks that scammers use, as they often use social engineering to target employees. It also helps them know the steps to take if they notice suspicious activity, such as reporting it to the CISO. Simulations can also help you assess the real-time responses of your staff, as they use similar tricks as used by cybercriminals.
- All your users should have passwords with special characters, numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters. Change these logins often to prevent cybercriminals from cracking them. Writing them down or choosing ‘Remember me’ to save them on the internet makes you vulnerable.
- Use two-factor authentication: 2FA helps to ensure that only authorized people access your email system.
Reference: What is Email Security? by Marius Nel; 360smartnetworks [2021]