5 Crucial Email Security Tips for Small Businesses
Most small businesses today rely on electronic mail communication thanks to its efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and convenience. However, email affordability and ease of use have made many companies vulnerable to data breaches, viruses, and ransomware attacks. According to a recent report, 91% of cyberattacks start with phishing emails to unsuspecting parties. This results in financial and reputation damage, so it is crucial to address email security to combat the risk of malicious attacks from your organization. Read on for five security tips to protect your email communication against attacks.
1. Create strong and secure passwords
One of the simplest ways to ensure unauthorized personnel do not access your emails is by creating a strong and secure password that is impossible to guess. To create a safe and strong password, ensure that it contains at least eight to 12 characters, including lower and upper cases, symbols, and numbers. You should also avoid using the same passcode for all your business accounts. Consider installing a password manager to help you manage various accounts’ passwords while keeping them safe.
2. Invest in an email spam filter
As a business, your inbox is often clogged with many emails daily, most of which contain irrelevant information, and others are malicious. For this reason, you should consider investing in a spam filter to ensure your company’s cyber security.
A spam filter is a program that leverages machine learning to detect malicious and unwanted email messages and flag them to prevent unsolicited content from reaching your inbox. This keeps you and the staff’s email accounts from receiving junk emails. Other email security needs spam filter programs like VIPRE cloud email security offers include:
- Data leak protection
- 90 days email retention
- Viruses and advanced email threats protection
- Six-layer scanning
3. Implement multi-factor authentication
Hackers develop new and sophisticated strategies daily to access your business’s confidential data. This means that no matter how unique your password is, they could figure it out, so you should consider using multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication adds an extra validation step to your email accounts. To access your account, you will have to input a code sent one time to your phone, implying that even if your password is compromised, a hacker cannot obtain confidential information without your phone. Encourage your employees to implement multi-factor authentication for all business accounts to increase security.
4. Use electronic mail encryption
Most small businesses send emails in plain text, which is easily legible by cybercriminals. For this reason, you should consider encrypting your emails, especially when sending sensitive information, to prevent prying eyes from accessing or reading your texts. There are various ways to encrypt your electronic mail, including installing email security certificates such as Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) on your email servers or using outsourced email hosting services. This will enable you, your employees, and clients to share a passkey that helps decipher email messages.
5. Do not use public Wi-Fi
It can be tempting to access your email account on the go using public Wi-Fi to send urgent emails to your employees and clients. However, this makes your account vulnerable to attacks. Hackers often create software on public Wi-Fi networks that monitors user activities and records credentials, giving them access to sensitive information, which is detrimental to your business. For this reason, you should avoid using public Wi-Fi, and if unavoidable circumstances necessitate using unsecured networks, ensure that you turn on your VPN.
Endnote
Protecting your small business data, including your emails, is essential to maintaining an excellent reputation and securing your finances. Implement the above email security strategies to help your business remain cyber secure.