Viruses, malware, and data breaches are a few severe risks that can leave your business defenseless against a financial or reputational disaster. And all of these threats may enter your business network through email. More specifically – through phishing emails. Email security is essential to protect your business against malicious threats. This article will show you how to safeguard your business’s intellectual property, confidential communication, and other private information.
#1 Create email policies
An email policy is an important element of your organization’s security. Hire the services of an email security expert to craft an email policy that all your employees must read and enforce to protect your business from cybercrimes.
An essential step in making these policies successful is to involve your employees and IT administrators in their creation and implementation. Educate your employees on the importance of email security and the dangers they should look out for.
#2 Educate your employees
Teach your employees the basics of email security. For example, make sure they know what phishing is and what phishing emails may look like.
Also, if employees open spam emails, advise them to never click any of the links they contain. Even if the email offers an opportunity to unsubscribe from the mailing list, they should just delete the email. Also, they should never forward chain messages to other parties as they reveal coworker email addresses, making them vulnerable to spammers.
#3 Use security tools to scan for dangerous attachments
Phishing emails may contain dangerous malware that can lead to devastating data leaks for your business. Even if you educate your employees not to open potentially dangerous attachments, you need some extra layers of security just to be sure your business is safe.
Special security tools like antivirus, firewalls or proxies can scan all emails that enter your business networks, and they can flag potentially dangerous attachments, which will ensure that the malware doesn’t infect the company network. So be sure to use these tools to add a layer of protection between the company servers and the content of received emails.
#4 Backup your emails
Backup solutions enable businesses to access messages even when mail servers are down or an employee accidentally deletes an email. Lost emails need to be recovered quickly to allow your business to run smoothly.
Investing in a backup solution will help your business maintain its documents and emails in an offsite location to safeguard loss from disasters such as cyber attacks, human error, and server failure.
#5 Separate business and personal email
The email that belongs to the company should be used only for business purposes. This helps protect your company data from cyber-attacks by reducing vulnerability to spammers.
Use a separate email account for personal use. This way, if an employee gives access to their email to a random person, they may not access your business data. Also, ensure that you use unique passwords for each of the accounts. This will prevent hackers from accessing both of your emails and impersonating you to conduct cybercrimes.
#6 Share files and confidential information after verifying the account
Before hitting the send button, determine if the email recipient really needs that information. You may be sending information to people who don’t really need it and may use it against you. So if you are sending confidential information, ensure the email is verified and the information is encrypted.
#7 Two-factor authentication
Two-factor authentication ensures that no hacker can access your email, even if they manage to get your login and password.
Apart from your username and password, two-factor authentication requires an extra authentication measure to access your email account. Your email provider can send a text message to your phone every time you log in to your email on a new device, or it can simply require Face ID or your fingerprint.
#8 Set strong passwords
Most people use obvious phrases when setting their email passwords. For example, they add two numbers to their pet’s name or their last name and birth year. The problem with such passwords is that it’s easy to guess them, and hackers can access confidential information that can harm your business.
Make it a policy for your employees to change their passwords at least 2 times per year. Instruct them to set long passwords and to not include their names, family members, or pet names. You can subscribe to a password manager to help your employees remember complicated passwords that hackers cannot generate.
Conclusion
Email security is an important issue that you should take care of if you want to grow your business. Cyber attacks can lead to financial and reputational losses if hackers share sensitive information about your business. Some ways to enhance email security include creating stronger passwords, installing antivirus software, and setting up a two-step authentication process.