Email Security Intelligence - Email Security Best Practices to Safeguard Your Business

Previously, email security best practices could be easily summarized as follows: use strong passwords, block spammers, don't trust offers that are too good to be true, and verify requests even from trusted sources. Today, email is critical to business success, and the preferred method of communication requires a more robust set of best practices to protect against costly cyber threats such as phishing, ransomware, and business email compromise (BEC).

Organizations are getting hit with ransomware more than ever, multiple times, and often by the same ransomware variant. Many businesses believe they are too small to be the victim of ransomware. However, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are often targeted. This is because attackers recognize and take advantage of the fact that these companies often have smaller security teams and tend to have limited budgets for cyber defense. Data reveals that most small businesses cannot recover from an attack, and 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of getting hit with ransomware. 

As email cyberattacks continue to evolve and emerge, inadequately secured email can put your business at great risk. This article will provide several simple methods to implement to improve your business’s email threat protection to defend against damaging cyberattacks and data breaches, 90% of which are initiated via email.

Practical Tips to Improve Your Business’s Cybersecurity Posture

As email is one of the most commonly used attack vectors by cybercriminals, an organization and its employees must follow email security best practices, such as: 

Use a Spam Filter

A spam filter is a program that detects unsolicited, unwanted, and infected emails and prevents messages from reaching a user's inbox. Like other filtering programs, a spam filter looks for specific criteria to determine whether an email is malicious. 

Spam email is still a significant problem for businesses and users, as it consumes startup resources and tools, time, and productivity. Thus, robust spam protection measures are necessary to ensure security and operational efficiency. 

Implement Email Encryption

Encryption is scrambling information so that only authorized users can access it. SSL certificates are an encryption-based technology that helps secure the communication between sender and receiver. Users should also consider implementing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, three highly effective protocols in combating sender fraud.

Email encryption can be divided into two main categories: transport encryption (such as STARTTLS or SSL/TLS) and application-level encryption. Transport encryption protects email as it travels between servers by encrypting its communication channel to prevent eavesdropping, while application-level encryption (such as PGP or Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions—S/MIME, for instance) ensures only intended recipients with valid decryption keys can read your messages regardless of the transport method used.

Secure Accounts with Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

MFA, or multi-factor authentication, security requires multiple authentication methods to confirm the user’s identity for logins and other transactions. MFA combines the user’s credentials to confirm that the user logging into the account is the owner. The credentials include what you know (knowledge), what you have (possession), and what you are (inheritance).

Back-Up Important Files 

Organizations should back up critical files frequently and automatically to reduce the potential damage of an attack. To implement a comprehensive backup strategy to protect against ransomware, supplement backups with additional copies kept in multiple locations, isolate backups, and test backups frequently. Perform restoration exercises regularly to identify any issues or vulnerabilities.

Conduct Regular Security Assessments, Audits & Employee Awareness Training 

Regular audits and assessments are a valuable way to identify weaknesses and areas for improvement in an organization's email infrastructure. Audits should include vulnerability scanning and configuration reviews.

Training your employees is a valuable investment that helps prevent cyberattacks. Security awareness training teaches employees to understand vulnerabilities and threats to business operations. 

Integrate Threat Intelligence

Threat intelligence integration into email security is necessary for organizations that wish to defend effectively against cyber threats. Threat intelligence involves collecting and analyzing data related to potential or current threats, such as IP addresses associated with malicious IPs or malware signatures. Organizations can utilize this data to proactively detect and counter threats before penetrating their networks, thus minimizing damage and maintaining business continuity. 

Threat intelligence offers numerous advantages for organizations, including improved early threat identification and response times, data-driven decision-making, improved response times, enhanced preventative measures, and a competitive edge by outwitting adversaries. Organizations looking to implement such a strategy should enlist reputable threat intelligence providers, utilize cloud-based email security solutions, regularly update and monitor threat data, integrate intelligence with existing security tools, and train employees on best practices and insights from these providers. 

More Robust Methods of Email Protection

With proper preparation, you can drastically improve email threat protection and lower the cost and impact of an attack. Implementing even stronger practices can reduce an organization’s exposure to email threats and minimize potential damage. This includes:

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Strengthen Your Email Security Strategy with Proactive Additional Layers of Protection

Many businesses continue to rely on endpoint security alone to safeguard users and key business assets. Endpoint security is a good first start, but it is ineffective in combating sophisticated and evolving threats without additional layers of proactive protection accompanied by expert, ongoing system monitoring, maintenance, and support. This protection must be able to anticipate and learn from emerging attacks and offer the real-time cybersecurity business insights required to improve decision-making and policy enforcement. 

Protect Email With Sender Authentication

Sender authentication prevents phishing attacks and protects email accounts against other threats like email spoofing and business email compromise (BEC) by providing a way to verify that an email comes from who it claims to be. This is possible with the help of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) specifies a method for preventing sender address forgery. DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) verifies that an email message was not faked or altered. DMARC unifies mechanisms used in SPF and DKIM, allowing domain owners to declare how they would like an email handled if it fails an authorization test. 

Invest in Fully-Managed Email Security Services

To fortify business email against today’s most advanced attacks, organizations must have a fully-managed email security solution in place designed to protect against the specific threats each business faces, to provide the level of expertise and support needed to safeguard sensitive data and other key assets in this modern digital threat environment. With an intuitive, multi-layered design, your solution must offer various layers of security that detect and block threats in real-time and build on each other to provide more effective protection.

Keep Learning About Best Practices to Strengthen Your Cybersecurity Posture

As businesses navigate a shifting digital landscape, strong email security practices become even more critical in protecting key organizational assets from sophisticated cyber attacks. Implementing foundational measures like spam filters, email encryption, and multi-factor authentication helps mitigate risks. Adopting advanced strategies such as proactive endpoint protection, sender authentication, and fully managed security services can bolster an organization's resistance to email-borne attacks. With strategic investments in employee training and comprehensive security solutions, businesses can protect against threats such as phishing, BEC, and ransomware and strengthen their cybersecurity posture overall. By prioritizing multilayered and proactive approaches, they can minimize disruptions while fortifying defenses - ultimately providing more robust protection and operational continuity in an ever-more interconnected world.

Continue learning about improving your email security protection by exploring the resources below:

• Learn more about protecting your business from ransomware.
• Keeping the integrity of your email safe requires securing the cloud with spam filtering and enterprise-grade anti-spam services.
• Get the latest updates on how to stay safe online.