With the increase of email usage over the decades, hackers saw a profit opportunity to get access to private details.
Fortunately, there are few easy best solutions to avoid email threats as follows.
01) Invest in antivirus software
Antivirus software can greatly reduce the threat of email security breaches against your business.
It is not enough to completely protect you. Therefore it is necessary to implement other best practices as well.
02) Implement a secure email gateway
Email gateway is designed to prevent the transmission of emails that break company policy or send malware.
By using a secure email gateway, we can filter incoming and outgoing email traffic and flag messages with suspicious attachments.
Further, a secure email gateway works better when paired with automated email encryption.
03) Invest in a secure archiving solution
Most businesses have some sort of system in place that automatically stores email records within an archive.
If the archive is not secure, hackers with the right credentials can access millions of bytes of sensitive data.
When shopping for email archiving solutions, it is necessary to look for the one that uses encryption, user authentication, and role-based permissions.
04) Create strong passwords and invest in multi-factor authentication.
Email security works, only if everyone within the organization creates strong passwords to secure the system.
For additional security, it is necessary to implement multi-factor authentication, which requires users to provide two or more pieces of evidence to verify user identity when they enter their login credentials.
05) Be wary of every email attachment
Hackers can easily transmit malware or infect the computer through email attachments.
By looking at the file extensions we can determine whether they are safe or not.
Most of the time JPG/JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, WAV, MP3, and MPG/MPEG are safe.
Files with XLS, TXT, or DOC extensions are less likely to be secure.
06) Organizational Policies
Most of the time organizational policies play an important role in preventing users from opening suspicious emails.
These policies should include clear instructions on how to recognize an email attack and how to prevent them.
07) Tools and Software
We can use software to stop suspicious emails from reaching users.
It is necessary to have some kind of software to identify malware attacks and suspicious emails.
Other than software, we can use tools such as Server and Application Monitor (SAM) to detect unusual activity on the mail server.
08) Update email filters
We can use high-quality spam filters to prevent malicious attacks.
Besides can block email within an IP Address from countries, since the majority of phishing emails are originated from a small block of countries.
09) Implement cloud-native security
Migrating to the cloud introduces new challenges to security that traditional strategies do not adequately cover.
We can avoid attacks by choosing security solutions built for the cloud from the firewall to anti-malware.
10) Employ Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
By analyzing communication patterns within the organization, advanced security solutions with machine learning can detect suspicious activities.
11) Cybersecurity training
Any security strategy must include regular cybersecurity awareness training within the organization.
It helps to avoid costly mistakes as users can recognize and report suspicious activities.
12) Restrict administrator privileges
Targeted hacking via phishing campaigns, insider threats can easily compromise on administrator account with traditional security policies.
Therefore using end-to-end encryption helps to reduce breaches at the server level.
13) Secure the implementation from the beginning
High-level email authentication standards such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Key Identified Mail (DKIM) can use to spot spam emails at the source level.
Further, it is needed to check if the information is transmitted securely before implementing any email system in your organization.
Conclusion
Hackers are constantly creating new ways to compromise security systems. As a result, email-based cyber-attacks are growing day by day.
Hence, it is necessary to secure sensitive data by taking precautions to protect emails.
Also, it is the responsibility of the organization to protect data of the customers who trust the organization.
By taking precautions as explained above, we can secure our data and emails from cybercriminals.