In spite of the rising popularity of social media and online collaboration platforms, email is still the favorite communications channel in business. Enterprise email accounts deal with massive amounts of high-value information every day, which is why they’re also considered top targets for cybercriminals seeking confidential records to sell on the dark web.
Email security refers to the collective measures taken to lock down business email accounts. It’s a broad term that includes both proactive measures like strict access controls and spam filters and reactive measures like desktop-based antivirus software. Because business email accounts handle confidential information, they must have multiple layers of protection.
Many small business owners don’t think they need enterprise-grade email security. After all, almost every consumer-level service, such as Gmail and Hotmail, feature encryption, strong access controls, and spam protection. However, consumer-level measures simply don’t meet the needs of most business environments.
Keep your communications encrypted
Although email accounts offer a general level of protection, confidential business information should be encrypted using 256-bit advanced encryption standards at rest and in transit. This way, any hacker who does manage to gain access to the system will be unable to use or even read it.
While you should refrain from sending highly confidential information via email, it’s still wise to encrypt everything, including the contents of attachments. You should also encrypt the connection itself to prevent any unauthorized users from intercepting sensitive data like login credentials. Finally, encryption must extend to any email contents that are kept backed up on a redundant server or another storage network. Remember, your email security is only as strong as its weakest link.
Boost productivity with spam protection
More than half of all emails sent are flagged as spam. Many small businesses receive hundreds or even thousands of spam emails every day, with employees using many hours of productivity per month manually dealing with them. To make matters worse, malicious spam messages (i.e., those that contain suspicious links and attachments) are increasingly sophisticated and can circumvent your email client’s built-in spam filter. If your employees don’t have a keen eye for such messages, they may inadvertently expose your company to more dangerous attacks.
That’s why you need to implement a third-party email filtering solution. These are backed up by archives of threat intelligence to detect a wide variety of spam messages and email scams. They can also inspect links and attachments to prevent users from clicking through to malware-ridden websites and files.
Protect your remote workers
Mobile devices and high-speed internet connections give people the flexibility to work from home and on the move. Unfortunately, this convenience comes at the cost of losing some control over information security. To protect their remote workers, businesses need to ensure that they can still enforce security measures and maintain complete visibility into the flow of company data.
The most effective way for businesses to protect their email accounts while they’re being used by remote workers is to make them accessible only through an enterprise-grade virtual private network (VPN). A VPN is effectively a wide-area network over which the business has complete control. Most importantly, this makes it safe for remote workers to connect to the web and access their emails from any network (including unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots) because web activity is concealed by a heavy layer of encryption.
Founders Technology Group provides best-in-class email security and spam protection to let your workforce use email without living in constant fear of cybercrime. Call us today to book a free consultation and get all the tools you need to keep cyberthreats at bay.