Email Protection is paramount whether your correspondence includes political secrets, personal information or business data. Read on for our list of best practices for keeping your email safe. An email was the first “killer app”. It quickly became an expensive, passive curiosity, where users had to buy digital tickets to send each and every email, something so ubiquitous that on average, people have 3 email addresses, even if they use it regularly. Do not do them. Setting up a free email account is easy. You can do it literally in minutes.
Maybe we shouldn’t strike, we certainly should, and here are some simple ways to help improve the security of your email.
Evaluate the use of email in your organization and establish whether the behavior is reasonably secure and the location of any potential threats. Choosing the right email provider is another important decision as some do not provide enterprise-level security.
Create a comprehensive email usage policy and ensure that employees are aware and helpful about it by making it user-friendly with examples for clarity. Governance support can ensure the success of the policy.
If your firm has a technology department, ask what its standard is to protect email from potential hacking.
For example, Cavoukian says, internal emails sent to his office are not required to be encrypted because those emails reside on the organization’s secure intranet servers.
Your second line of defense is some form of encryption. If you are not using an encrypted email system for business, you should upgrade immediately. Otherwise, you’re essentially closing your front door with a deadbow, and widening the back door, above which a neon sign is visible. As you can imagine, this provides somewhat inadequate protection.
A VPN (virtual private network) adds additional security to email by encrypting and routing all Internet traffic through the VPN provider’s servers.
A multitude of enterprise VPN services are available. Establish the required authentication levels and management controls. Choose one that can meet your specific needs, who will be connected and how. Free open source options are also available but can be complex to install and use effectively.
People are the weakest link of any security system and to be the first line of defense and file-sharing, workplace collaboration and mobile devices have to bring new threats that are not always understood. A security awareness program can ensure that staff email are protected from any developing threats as they develop as new education threats.
Install antivirus software that prevents, detects, and removes threats. The program used should scan incoming emails and attachments. And prevent spam, remove viruses, phishing, worms, malware, ransomware, Trojans and any other threats, both incoming and outgoing. It should be automatically and continuously updated to protect against any new threats as they emerge.
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