Business email can be the bane of our existence, right?  It is never ending. It arrives constantly in our inboxes. For some of us we try to ignore it. While others try to open and get rid of it as fast as possible.  Unfortunately, business email is a primary way hackers can gain access to sensitive company data and information. This is especially true for small to medium sized businesses. Overall cyber-attacks on companies with 250 or fewer employees doubled in the first six months of last year—and the loss per attack was more than $188,000 on average. The effect of cyber-attacks on the American economy as a whole is a high cost of $100 billion annually, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. What are some easy and straightforward ways to secure your business email? Let’s take a look as some of the tips offered by security experts.
A Cyber Security Plan – Create, use and maintain a cyber security plan that has been carefully researched and based upon current information. This should include not just a secure email protocol but also ways to keep your website, payment information, client data and other private information secure.
Consider Email Encryption– Email encryption helps to protect personal information from hackers by only permitting certain users to access and read your emails. This could include downloading software, an email certificate or a third party encryption service.
Passwords!- Â We cannot say this enough. Passwords should be reset every three months or so. Also consider requiring multi factor authentication when employees change their passwords. Remind employees that the strongest passwords contain 12 characters, including a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers, symbols and characters.
Train Employees – Since employees are on the front line of opening and dealing with emails they should be trained on what to look for in suspicious emails and protocols to follow when opening and disposing of emails. According to the Business Academy, employees should be trained to comply with the following rules:
- Never open links or attachments from unknown persons.
- Don’t respond to emails that request a password change and require you to divulge personal information—no matter how official the source appears.
- Ensure antivirus and anti-spy software is updated on your computer.
- Encrypt any emails containing sensitive data before sending.
- Don’t use your company email address to send and receive personal emails.
- Don’t automatically forward company emails to a third-party email system.
Categorised in: hosted email, Security