Understanding Email Attacks: How to Protect Yourself and Your Organization

Email attacks are a growing concern for organizations of all sizes. Cybercriminals use email as a primary vector to compromise sensitive information, steal data, or facilitate other cybercrimes. From spam campaigns to malware, phishing attacks, and business email compromise, attackers take advantage of email security weaknesses. Since most organizations rely on email to do business, attackers misuse email to steal sensitive information. This becomes a problem when organizations send sensitive and confidential information via email. Without special protective measures, attackers can intercept email messages and easily read their contents. The negative consequences of email-based attacks can include significant financial loss, data loss, and reputational damage.

Fundamental common email attack types include:

Phishing: This is a fraudulent email disguised as being from an authorized, trusted source. The message’s intent is to trick the recipient into installing malware on his or her device or into sharing personal or financial information.

Spear phishing: This is a highly targeted phishing attack. These emails are designed to look like they come from a senior executive, such as the CEO or CFO, and often involve requests for money transfers or other sensitive information.

Email spoofing: This is a type of attack where the sender's email address is forged to appear as if it is from a trusted source.

Email thread hijacking: This attack typically infiltrates a vulnerable email server or Microsoft Exchange Server to gain access to ongoing email conversations. The fraudulent email can lead to the installation of ransomware or malware that can be leveraged to use the computer in a massive botnet.

Email bombs and Email DoS/DDoS attacks: These attacks involve sending a large number of emails to a single recipient or domain, causing the email server to crash or become unresponsive.

Business Email Compromise (BEC): This involves a phony email appearing to be from someone in or associated with the target’s company requesting urgent action, whether wiring money or purchasing gift cards.

Malversating: This type of phishing utilizes digital ad software to publish otherwise normal looking ads with malicious code implanted within. attacks can include significant financial loss, data loss, and reputational damage.

Securing Your Organization's Email Communications

To protect against email attacks, it is essential to use strong email security practices, such as using secure email providers, enabling spam filters, implementing multi-factor authentication, and educating employees or users about potential threats and how to recognize and avoid them.

These are various measures that organizations can implement to protect against email attacks:

1. Use Protected Emails with End-to-End Encryption: Sending mails without encrypting means that you are letting some third party read the private conversation exclusive to your organization.
2. Spot Spam Emails at the Source Level: Try spotting spam emails at the source level before they reach employees’ mailbox by having the best available spam filtering algorithms that check with high-level email authentication standards such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) before sending/forwarding emails.
3. Restrict Downloading PDFs, Word Documents, ZIP Files: Restrict downloading PDFs, Word documents, ZIP files that come attached from suspicious sources by blocking the access to such sources.
4. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication: Implement multi-factor authentication to protect your email account.
5. Use Email Security Solutions: Deploy an email security solution that can prevent users from clicking on a malicious link or opening an attachment that contains malware.

To enhance your personal and organizational defense against email attacks, it is advisable to exercise caution when opening emails from unfamiliar senders. Be vigilant for indications of phishing attempts, such as spelling errors, questionable links or attachments, and requests for personal information. Employ robust password practices and consider using secure, end-to-end encrypted email services. Organizations can further bolster their defenses by detecting and blocking spam emails at the source, limiting the downloading of PDFs, Word documents, and ZIP files, implementing multi-factor authentication, and deploying robust email security solutions. By proactively adopting these security measures, organizations can significantly diminish the risk of falling victim to email-based cyberattacks and reinforce their overall data security posture.