Email Security Best Practices: 16 Tips To Keep Your Business Safe
With over 4 billion active email users worldwide, email represents one of the best mediums for marketers to interact with customers and leads.
However, that enormous user base makes email platforms a prime target for hackers and malicious actors seeking to gain access to sensitive data for nefarious purposes.
This article will show you the email security best practices to incorporate in order to prevent data breaches, business email compromise, phishing attacks, and other types of email security threats.
Recommended email security best practices include:
1. Create strong passwords
Strong passwords are the first thing to consider if you want to keep your email systems safe. All your emails should have passwords of at least eight characters that include the following:
uppercase letters
lowercase letters
symbols
numbers.
All these components combined constitute a strong password that is hard for a hacker to guess. If you have multiple business email accounts and struggle to remember passwords for all of them, consider employing password manager software to help you, such as LastPass or 1Password.
Avoid including personal information in your passwords. For instance, don't use "Michael123" if your name is Michael; you can instead use "m1Ch4eI". The crux is that complex passwords are much better than simple passwords and represent one of the most important email security practices.
For a quick and simple guide to creating a strong password, watch this video from Google.
2. Enable two-factor authentication for your email account
Two-factor or multi-factor authentication is one of the most important enterprise email security protocols to observe. It is a system that requires at least two methods of identification before granting access to your email account.
The first is usually your username and password, while the second is a one-time password sent to your mobile device or another email address. Without this one-time password, access will not be granted to your email account.
The second mode of identification can also be biometric authentication, e.g. fingerprint or facial scans. There are dedicated apps that allow you to implement two-factor authentication with ease, e.g. Authy and Duo Mobile, or you can use a hardware authenticator for better email security.
This system ensures that a hacker can't breach your email account and gain access to personal communications, even if they somehow get your password. According to Microsoft, multi-factor authentication alone can prevent 99.9% of attacks on your email communications.
3. Change passwords regularly to ensure email security
Changing your passwords frequently is one of the best practices for email security. Cybersecurity experts recommend changing passwords every three months to reduce the chance of breaches on corporate networks.
It's also important to avoid re-using the same passwords. When it's time to change your password, it shouldn't be too similar to one of your previous passwords, because that one may have been breached by a hacker.
4. Train against phishing attacks
Phishing emails are emails designed to appear as if they come from a well-known source when, instead, they are sent by impersonators. The idea is to trick users into giving up sensitive information that can be used to gain access to corporate email networks.
It can also trick the user into performing a suggested action, e.g. paying a bogus invoice; this is known as a business email compromise and is known to cause billions of dollars in annual losses.
The good thing is that you can train yourself and your employees to recognize phishing campaigns, as follows:
The first thing to do is check the email address of the sender. Ensure that it's the exact email of the legitimate sender and not an impersonation; watch out for similar letters and symbols such as "J0hnB1rch@gmail.com" being used to impersonate "JohnBirch@gmail.com".
Also, if the email is telling you that you need to confirm some financial information, is offering a coupon for free items, or says you're eligible for a government refund, etc, then it's likely to be a scam.
There are two main types of phishing emails; spear phishing and whaling.
Spear phishing is the type that targets individuals and will include information that's of interest to the target, while whaling is aimed at senior executives of a company with the goal of initiating a money transfer.
In this era, training against phishing attempts and other types of social engineering tactics should be compulsory for you and your employees.
5. Enable email encryption
All emails passing through a corporate network should be encrypted, which implies converting plaintext into ciphertext in transit and back to plaintext in the recipient's inbox.
If an email is encrypted, anyone that intercepts it will be unable to read and decipher its contents. An unencrypted email might as well be a virtual postcard that anyone is free to read, which is bad for email security and certainly contrary to email security best practices.
The good thing is that most major email platforms and service providers have encryption capabilities. Still, that might not be enough.
It's also important to encrypt your corporate network and your email attachments before sending them. Currently, only 50% of global organizations employ email encryption, which is a low figure that needs to increase if we're to combat email-related cybercrimes.
To improve your email deliverability and stop your emails from going to junk (instead of your recipients’ inboxes), explore our latest posts.
6. Avoid public Wi-Fi networks
Public Wi-Fi networks are notorious for being unencrypted, so hackers can easily expose your device to malware or use your web traffic for hacking attacks.
Malware takes advantage of a specific vulnerability on your device to break in and access sensitive data. For instance, the malware operator can steal your passwords and eavesdrop on everything you're doing online.
Public Wi-Fi may seem like a blessing but it comes with elevated email security risks and a legion of other security threats. So, we recommend that you avoid them wherever possible and use only trusted Wi-Fi networks.
If you have no other choice but to connect to a public network on your work or personal device, then you should —at the very least—subscribe to a virtual private network (VPN) service to encrypt your internet connection.
7. Install antivirus software
An antivirus program helps protect your personal devices from common cyber-attacks and threats, so you should install it on all devices connected to a corporate network and ensure the software remains up to date.
Once you install it, ensure you enable automatic scanning so that the antivirus software can regularly scan your devices for malware and fight any issue it detects.
When you install antivirus software, you're far less likely to become a victim of widespread cyberattacks that could compromise your email security and the safety of multiple accounts and passwords in your name.
8. Be careful about email attachments
An email attachment is one of the most common methods used by hackers to target small businesses and spread malware.
The hacker can include a malicious executable code in the attachment, and downloading it will introduce that code into your device, so only open attachments you trust!
If you receive an attachment, ensure it is scanned by anti-malware software that can easily block malicious attachments.
Extra caution is required if the email attachment has an extension related to an executable software program, such as MSI (Windows Installer) or JAR (Java application program).
Also, ensure the attachment is from a trusted source. If an email address looks suspicious, don't open attachments such as images, word documents, and other files from that address!
9. Be careful about email links
Hackers can include malicious links in an email that introduce malware into your device.
For instance, hackers can display a well-known domain name, such as www.Google.com, but clicking on it redirects you to another, far more malicious domain.
Hackers can also use similar letters and symbols to impersonate a reputable brand, e.g., Micr0s0ft.com to impersonate Microsoft.com (zeros instead of Os).
Just like with email attachments, be careful about any link you see within an email. Always pre-check the link by hovering your mouse pointer above it to see if the actual link is different from the one that's displayed.
If the link is from an unknown source, avoiding it altogether might be the best option—and the only option that prevents unauthorized access to your corporate network.
10. Use content filtering tools
Many email providers give you access to tools with which you can filter incoming messages. You can define the rules for incoming messages and the filtering system will use your rules to decide if they're legit emails or spam emails.
For example, if the message comes from a particular sender address, then it can automatically be marked as legit and sent to the primary inbox folder.
Alternatively, if it contains spammy words like "free", "discount", and "limited edition", then the system might quarantine the message for further review or delete it automatically.
Content filtering helps you keep your corporate email network in check using rules that you've defined. It's one of the most useful email security tools to have in your kit.
11. Avoid personal use of corporate email and vice versa
We strongly advise that you avoid using your corporate email accounts for personal activities.
For instance, don't use it to sign up for your social media or gaming accounts. Doing so increases the risk of a cyberattack and leaks of sensitive information.
Besides, if you stop working at that organization and lose access to the email, it may cause you to lose access to your personal accounts as well.
Similarly, don't use your personal accounts for corporate activities. Your personal email provider may not have the sophisticated features that your corporate email provider does, which can widen the risk of a data breach.
12. Don't reply to suspicious messages
At times, people observe that an email is suspicious and likely comes from a spammer, but decide to reply anyway to tease and mock the sender. This is seriously not advisable.
That's because replying to a suspicious email address makes it look valid in the eye of the email platform, so future messages from that spammer might land in your (or another recipient's) primary inbox instead of in the spam folder where they belong.
Avoid replying to any suspicious messages. This will reduce the chances of yourself or someone else within or outside your organization falling victim to schemes perpetuated by a spammer or scammer.
13. Implement email authentication protocols
Email authentication protocols prove your identity to email service providers (ESPs) and internet service providers (ISPs).
By implementing them, you make it difficult for hackers and spammers to impersonate you, and you'll get a higher deliverability rate—which should aid your email marketing efforts.
The main authentication protocols include:
A) Sender policy framework (SPF)
This involves providing a Domain Name System (DNS) record that specifies which IP addresses or hostnames are permitted to send emails from your domain name.
The receiving mail server can access these records and check if an email claiming to come from your domain name actually comes from a whitelisted IP address or hostname.
If it does, then the mail server will green-light the message for placement in the inbox. Otherwise, it will either be sent to the spam folder or deleted.
B) DomainKeys identified mail (DKIM)
This protocol is a result of two merged protocols, "DomainKeys" developed by Yahoo, and "Identified Internet Mail" developed by Cisco.
It involves adding an encryption key (or digital signature) to an email header. The key also needs to be specified in your DNS record.
DKIM is like a watermark or fingerprint that's unique to your messages. If the receiving mail server sees the encryption key, then it verifies that the message is from you. Otherwise, it sends the message to the spam folder or deletes it.
C) Domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance (DMARC)
The domain-based message authentication method involves publishing a DNS record that specifies which protocols the sender is using.
It defines your email authentication policies for the receiving mail server and tells it how to handle messages that violate the policies.
The actions to take in response to a policy violation could be:
p=none (take no action)
p=quarantine (accept the email but send it to the spam folder), or
p=reject (block delivery to any email folder).
For a comprehensive intro to DMARC, watch this video by NextTech Consultants.
D) Brand indicators for message identification (BIMI)
This is the latest email authentication protocol and it involves displaying a unique logo that email recipients can see in their inboxes.
This unique logo verifies that the email is from you and not an impersonator. It provides extra email security because, even if a scammer successfully impersonates you, their message won't display the unique logo that you provided to the email client.
The above four protocols represent some of the best email security solutions available, and they go a long way to preventing malicious actors from impersonating your organization to perpetuate email scams.
Watch this YouTube video from the Global Cyber Alliance to get a better idea of how they work.
14. Monitor your third-party applications
Many people integrate third-party apps with their email service providers, which is understandable. But, these third-party apps can introduce security risks due to mistakes or negligence by their developers.
For instance, Log4J is a popular tool that developers use to monitor their online services, but this tool was compromised, introducing security flaws into thousands of apps worldwide.
Monitor your third-party apps regularly to ensure that they don't present security issues. Check that they're downloaded from verifiable sources and check news reports and reviews to see if the apps have any known security risks.
If you discover a threat yourself, endeavor to contact the developers to fix the bugs (they might even offer you a reward for doing so).
15. Use Mailer To Go
The email service provider (ESP) you choose plays a major role in keeping your email secure, if not the biggest role of all.
For instance, if your ESP is not good at spam filtering, then all of your personal efforts in that area may be futile.
Mailer To Go is a good example of a platform that offers solid email security. All our websites and microservices use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption.
All data sent through Mailer To Go is encrypted in transit, and our physical infrastructure is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's biggest and most trusted cloud storage provider.
Explore Mailer To Go’s informative blog to improve your email deliverability, discover the difference between transactional and bulk emails, prevent subscription bombing, and more!
16. Do regular file backups
Even if you incorporate all of the email security best practices mentioned above, your systems still won't be 100% failsafe. There is always a risk, no matter how small, of your network security getting compromised.
For this reason, one of the most important email security protocols to follow is regular backups of all of your sensitive files.
Any such file sent to your email should be downloaded and stored in a safe digital location (cloud storage or on-site servers). This way, if you get compromised and lose access to your email marketing files, you can easily retrieve them from the backup location.
Otherwise, you may permanently lose sensitive information which could put your business at risk.
Conclusion
Failure to adhere to email security best practices opens the door to email scams that cause billions of dollars in annual losses worldwide.
There are endless variations of these schemes, including business email compromise, spear phishing emails, malware to steal personally identifiable information, theft of user's identity, and more.
Thankfully, there are a number of steps that you can take to significantly reduce your chances of falling victim to these threats.
By employing a secure service like Mailer To Go, while following all of the email security tips outlined in this post, your chances of being compromised via email messages will be exponentially lowered.
Frequently asked questions
What are email security best practices?
Email security best practices are guidelines and procedures designed to protect your email accounts and the information within them from cyber threats. These practices include using strong and unique passwords, enabling two-factor authentication, being cautious with email attachments and links, and regularly updating and patching your email software.
Why are email security best practices important?
Email security best practices are important because email is a common target for cybercriminals. By following these practices, you can protect your email accounts from threats such as phishing, malware, and data breaches. This is particularly important if you handle sensitive information in your emails.
How can I improve my email security?
You can improve your email security by following a few key practices:
Use strong, unique passwords for each of your email accounts.
Enable two-factor authentication, which requires a second form of verification in addition to your password.
Be cautious with email attachments and links, as these can be used to spread malware.
Regularly update and patch your email software to protect against known vulnerabilities.
Use a secure email service provider like Mailer To Go that offers built-in security features.
What is two-factor authentication in email security?
Two-factor authentication (2FA) in email security is a method of verifying your identity that requires two separate forms of identification. This typically involves something you know (like your password) and something you have (like a code sent to your phone).
2FA adds an extra layer of security to your email accounts, making it harder for unauthorized users to gain access.
What should I do if I receive a suspicious email?
If you receive a suspicious email, do not click on any links or download any attachments. Report the email to your email service provider and delete it. If the email appears to be from a company you do business with, contact the company directly (using contact information from their official website, not the email) to verify the email's legitimacy.