Best Email Security Practices for Employees

Best Email Security Practices for Employees — You can set up any system to protect your organization from cyberattacks, but many cyberattacks hit you where you are most vulnerable — your employees. Emails are one of the most used communication channels today. Cybercriminals can email malicious content messages to steal confidential data and harm your organization. For this reason, it is vital that your employees implement the necessary practises about email security. Here are five best email security practises to implement for your employees:

1- Strong Passwords

This advice has been around for a long time, but unfortunately, poor password implementations remain a problem. Strong passwords are the most basic requirement for email security. A weak password will never protect your email and company data in your email account. A strong password (and your company’s password policy) must follow these guidelines.

• Use numbers and special characters
• Avoid words that can be found in a dictionary
• Use upper and lower case letters
• Do not include any information that someone could easily guess based on your identity

2- Avoid Public Wi-Fi

When you are using public wi-fi, anyone can hack your data through the public wi-fi connection. An attacker could be sniffing all data passing over wi-fi, including your emails containing company data. Setting up and using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is very important for security when working on unsecured networks. Therefore, the use of public wi-fi should be avoided, and if you must use it, you should at least use it with VPN connection.

3- Use Data Encryption

It is one of the most important issues regarding email security in cryptography systems. This security feature ensures that your outgoing emails are data encrypted in all respects so that there is no gap for the hacker to infiltrate them. Advanced encryption features also protect the encryption of recipient details and email message headers. Therefore, cybercriminals have no way to know the content of your emails or the details of their recipients. Every business organization, or every individual for that matter, should install this email security feature on their computer network. It is one of the best ways to avoid becoming a victim of phishing attempts.

4- Prevent Phishing Attacks

Unfortunately, compromised credentials represent the vast majority of hackers, and phishing and targeted phishing attacks are responsible for most of these breaches. Phishing has become much more complicated than a suspicious email encouraging a random person to click a link or provide their personal information. It often focuses on targeting a person.

Hence, phishing attacks may pose a great threat to your company. With Keepnet Labs’ field-proven phishing simulation module, you can safely and proactively test and measure your organization’s human vulnerability by sending harmless phishing attacks to your team, tracking their actions, and giving you feedback.

5- Train Your Employees

Your employees need online cybersecurity training to protect themselves and the company from cyber attacks. By informing employees of security threats, how they can arise, and what procedures to follow when a threat is identified, you strengthen the most vulnerable links in the chain. Traditional courses consist of do’s and don’ts probably won’t be sufficient for your employees against real threats. Keepnet Labs Awareness Educator provides appropriate and engaging methods ensuring your employees become more aware of threats. When used with Keepnet Labs’s Phishing Simulator, it is inevitable for your employees to become more conscious and ready for cyber attacks.

Author: Hector

Cyber Security Researcher