Are you doing everything possible to keep your email secure? It goes far beyond simple privacy settings and passwords.
Email is becoming a doubled edged sword for many businesses. Its ubiquity means that it simply must be a part of everyday work life, but it offers significant security hazards for a company. Email can be a vector for direct attack, malware, espionage, or just a way for employees to make very costly mistakes.
Are you doing everything possible to keep your email secure? It goes far beyond simple privacy settings and passwords.
Email is becoming a doubled edged sword for many businesses. Its ubiquity means that it simply must be a part of everyday work life, but it offers significant security hazards for a company. Email can be a vector for direct attack, malware, espionage, or just a way for employees to make very costly mistakes.
As businesses expand their online offerings, it’s equally important email remains secure against possible threats.
Easy Tips For Keeping Your Email Secure & Private
1 – Hold a refresher on NPI policies.
Email security starts with your employees, especially because -statistically speaking- they are the most likely to cause a data breach. In fact, most data breaches on record are ultimately due to employee negligence, either emailing private data or putting it on an insecure personal mobile device.
Whatever it takes, get it into your coworkers’ heads that secure data never, ever goes into an unsecured email. That will do more good than most actual security measures.
2 – Use Passphrases
Hopefully, in a few more years we’ll have biometrics on everything and can quit using passwords. Until that happy day, pass phrases are a good compromise between security and memorability. A phrase, such as a single word, can be easily remembered and cracked. Look for something 8+ characters total with symbols, capitalization, lowercase, and numbers.
3 – Use Two-Factor Authentication
Many email providers now offer a more secure way of accessing mail, called two-factor authentication. This requires not just a password, but also a custom code that is generated at the tim
e of login. It’s transmitted to the user, usually via SMS, to a device only they would have. Other services may use a synchronized random-number dongle to generate the code.
While not foolproof, and slightly cumbersome, this greatly decreases the chances of malicious email access.
4 – Turn off automatic image display.
Everyone knows by now not to open attachments from strangers (right…?) but fewer know that the same “stranger danger” now comes from images as well. Some malware can be hidden inside inline images, and cause malicious code to launch when rendered. The easiest protection against this is turning off automatic image display in your email clients. Then, users simply click a button to show images on a per-email basis, when they know it’s from a trustworthy source.
Don’t Risk Your Email Security
It’s easy to take email for granted, but if anything, the security concerns attached to email continue to grow. Be certain your policies are up to date, and your employees are fully briefed on the vital importance of email security. It’s a true all-for-one situation, because even one lapse in judgment can cause huge damage to a company.
Need more information around email security or encryption? Bi101 is here to help discuss your options! As businesses expand their online offerings, it’s equally important email remains secure against possible threats.
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photo credit: ePublicist via photopin cc