How many emails do you send per day? How many of them do you want someone to read? Even though messengers and social media have been dominating personal and business interaction, email remains the most trusted communication method for the majority of companies in the world.
If the safety of email interaction is compromised, the losses can be substantial. What do you do to strengthen your email security?
Does your IT team have any practices to offer? If you believe that your email is safe just because it should be, you are wrong. Let’s talk about the best email security practices you should be considering.
1. Be Smart About Your Passwords
The era of the Internet is in full swing and people still use such passwords as their mother’s maiden name or date of birth. As an IT professional or a CEO, you know the importance of a strong password.
Don’t assume all of the employees do as well. The best way to strengthen the passwords your company uses is to assign them to employees individually. This way you can be sure none of them uses weak passwords.
A secure password is something nobody can guess. Today password-guessing software can hack your email if you give it something to work with.
A program will break your password eventually. Depending on the password’s strength, it can take from 1 minute to 200 years to do it.
The parameters of password safety are simple. A strong one should contain:
- Upper and lower case letters.
- Numbers and special characters.
- Numbers and letters rather than words.
- Phrases rather than words.
2. Use Two Tier Identification
It may seem annoying, but a two-tier identification can heighten your email security substantially. An extra layer of protection can make your email virtually impossible to hack. A reliable email client should give you such an option.
The two-tier identification involves typing in a password AND something else. It could be an answer to a secret question or a code sent to your smartphone. Don’t allow sending the code to your other email. You never know when it may be hacked. Opt for text messages.
3. Be Careful About Clicking Links
Anyone who has your email address can send you a phishing email. These seemingly official emails contain links that take you to web pages, which look very trustworthy, eg. your bank services site.
They usually require you to enter your personal data, email address, and password to get what you need. The site owner immediately gets access to your password and can read your email (unless you have a two-tier identification in place).
Hackers have gotten very smart at creating official-looking websites. It may take a person a while to figure out he or she is being scammed.
4. Limit Sending Emails
Many employees use their company email to register for services. Companies use email address validation by Byteplant or other services to check if the email is correct and start sending offers. Besides generating unnecessary messages, such email sharing can lead to an increase of hack attacks.
Employees should use business email for work-related purposes only. This way they can limit email exposure, thus minimizing the chances of a hack attack.
5. Never Use Public Wi-Fi
Public Wi-Fi is not secure. Numerous ways exist for hackers to steal any information you pass through the public network. A hacker only needs a laptop and simple software to get into the public Wi-Fi network and check out the traffic which passes through it.
Meaning, all the emails you send and get while using that network are out in the open. If you are in a public area, use mobile internet.
Keeping your email secure is vital to the information safety and a company’s well-being. Make sure to get this information through to your employees.
