Top 5 Email Security Best Practices to Prevent Malware Distribution

In recent years, the occurrences of malware attacks have significantly increased as compared to the previous times. For many organizations, prevention and response planning for ransomware are high on the 2021 list of priorities. And those who aren’t thinking about what else they can do should probably seek help, and better prepare their organizations for this type of attack.

Many organizations have temporarily adjusted their policies to accommodate home check orders following the current pandemic. But, on the other hand, it is increasingly realizing that the future of work involves the workforce. And the work is constantly changing—and often remotely. People are the most valuable asset of organizations, and they are also the most vulnerable asset to cybercrime attacks. Although the world around us has changed beyond recognition, the arena of these targeted attacks is familiar: email.

Earlier this year, cybercriminals quickly added a pandemic to their email scams and recently ridiculed the tax administration, claiming they were sharing news about the COVID-19 tax for stealing sensitive tax data. Recently, Google’s threat analysis team reported finding 18 million malicious email addresses and stealing COVID-19 identities each day. And it doesn’t cover all email theft attacks, account fraud, and phishing attacks that aren’t COVID-19 related but dangerous. Talk to our experts to get more information on which certification you should take to start or advance your information security career. 

Email Security - What Is It?

Can you believe that every single day approximately 300 billion emails are sent? However, with the massive usage, one must secure the channel because so many emails have been stolen all over the world; it is more important than ever to protect your email account from all kinds of threats. Not sure how email protection works? First, email security is about protecting your email accounts from unauthorized access.

You are probably also using your email account as a means to verify other sensitive online transactions, such as online banking, which is another reason to protect it. Companies should pay special attention to email security and provide such credentials as CCNP certification to their workforce. The CCNP is an extremely common entry point to learn how to prevent hackers who want to steal company data or distribute ransomware.

What about Phishing?

Email is also a way for cybercriminals to send annoying spam and dangerous identity theft. Phishing is a scam in which cybercriminals falsely present themselves as a business or personal contact in an attempt to encourage you to disclose personal information that they may use for identity theft or other crimes.

Email Security Best Practices

If you adopt the best practice below and find out what security protocols are used to protect your email, you’ll soon be protecting your accounts.

Protect Yourself from Spam, Identity Theft, and Malware

We love spam, such as musubi, but we’re not talking about spam protecting us. Spammers use a variety of methods to steal sensitive business and personal information, such as key registrars, identity theft, or links to malicious websites. To prevent this, you need an email service that prevents malware or spam from entering your mailbox or powerful antivirus software along with your work email. With a good mailbox security filter, you worry less about potential security breaches.

Use 2FA in Your Accounts and Workflow

If you haven’t already done so, it’s a good idea to enable Two Factor Authentication (2FA) on your business and personal accounts. However, 2FA on your work accounts doesn’t solve the whole problem, because cybercriminals can compromise your account and leave it as an email to your employer or family.

Try repeating 2FA, even in a vague sense, for emails that make weird money or data-related apps. For example, did the vendor send you an email in which your bank information changed abruptly as if you needed to pay the bill? Even if the salesperson is very busy, he understands your warning and appreciates it.

Don’t Be Overwhelmed By Automated Brand Emails

You will probably receive a lot of emails every day from your favorite market, streaming service, email provider, and other generic brands. You will probably click on this email and take the desired action without thinking (update password, enter address). Cybercriminals know this and often mimic these trademarks in their emails and try to steal sensitive data.

Even if you’re very busy, try contextual email verification before taking any action. Does your network operator request your SSN via email? Does the streaming service send an email to your email address, even if your account is linked to your address? Spending a few seconds here can avoid many conflicts.

Check the Company’s Internal Email Address

By reading this, you will become more active in email protection, but also the same consideration with cybercriminals. This means that even public email addresses can be malicious. This does not mean that your business email address contains viruses. As a matter of fact, most malware comes primarily from the outside. However, if an employee’s computer is infected with malware, he or she can send malicious emails from a personal email address or the workplace without their knowledge.

Beware of email links, even if they seem to take you to a familiar place. It never hurts to work with colleagues to make sure they have sent you an email with a potentially suspicious link. If they don’t send it to you, just delete it. But keep in mind that cybercriminals make mistakes too. If the link appears to be authentic, check for spelling errors or unusual name variations. In most cases, these are deadly gifts with a malicious connection.

Advance Secure Archiving Solution

By using a secure email portal in your business, you can filter incoming emails and send and mark emails with suspicious attachments. A secure email gateway works best with automatic email encryption that identifies sent messages that contain potentially sensitive or confidential data and encrypt it so that hackers cannot access it.

Many of these attacks require a lot of thinking to make the workflow authentic. Whether it’s a bank message asking your security questions or a CAPTCHA trying to lure victims into a sense of false security, no email seems to be immune to it at all for potential use.

Different Types of Malware Threats

Spam

While it may seem harmless—more annoying than the actual threat—if you leave spam in the wrong hands, it poses a serious threat to data security. In 2017’s breach, more than 700 million email addresses were abandoned as a result of misdirected spam, causing a spam attack. Although the consequences of this particular failure are fortunately minimal due to the many fake and duplicate email addresses in the data set, spam attacks can be much more damaging. The knock of email, growing spam, is especially harmful because it treats spam like a type of Trojan horse.

Phishing

Phishing refers to any attack in which a hacker uses electronic means of communication, usually email, to gain control of a trusted person. The idea is that if the recipient sees that the message is coming from trusted sources, they are more likely to provide personal information if they wish, such as logging in to their account or opening an attachment. It is not safe and therefore not exposed to viruses. If a hacker has the victim’s email address, they run scripts to add it to as many unprotected websites as possible and leave them vulnerable. In the event of a mailbox overflow, the victim is less likely to notice unusual warnings or malicious behavior, allowing the hacker to access and leave the victim’s accounts intact.

Viruses

Viruses are often associated with spam and cyber-attacks and use an email address where they have access to an individual’s or organization’s systems. Once the virus successfully enters the system, it activates its load. Depending on the nature of the virus, it can erase the hard drive, create a password, or stab the system. It is one of the most common types of cyber-attacks. In the past, there were more than 204 million ransomware attacks, up 11% from last year. An email bomb is the target of messages filled with messages, many of which are confirmation emails.

Ransomware

Like the 1979 horror classics, “When a Stranger Calls,” they sometimes talk inside the house. Some employees have unlimited access to sensitive information, depending on their role in the company - and the organization only needs one dissatisfied employee - who is at the center of the data breach. In a matter of fact, 65.1% of IT managers think employees have maliciously corrupted company data in the last 12 months, while 75.9% believe employees have accidentally corrupted data.

Potential Malware

You can’t control what somebody sends you via email or other digital mediums, but you have the power to gain access to trusted or verified sources. While this is an old technique to capture classified information, these types of cyberattacks and data leakage have become routine practices. Downloading or even clicking on unverified URLs or attachments can compromise sensitive data in one go, so backing up your files to a cloud service that best aligns with your company’s needs is always the smart thing to do.

Research has shown a skyrocketing increase in the demand for cloud services primarily in the COVID-19 virtual working space, with Microsoft reporting a 77.5% upsurge in cloud service demand during the pandemic. Why? Cloud services give you more flexibility in data storage, increased security, and more collaboration worldwide. Even if you require printing service or network expanders for your business, it is recommended to enroll in the CCNA certification to better understand network aspects and use secure password-protected wireless connections. Family members can then be sure who’s accessing which network and ensure their data is also safe.

Helpful Tips - Stay on Top of Your Email Security Game

However, 2020’s most brazen data breaches, such as the Marriot cyber-attack, Zoom accounts’ compromised credentials, the leaked personal details of more than 10.6 million MGM Resorts’ guests, and more signal the need for implementing cybersecurity measures. Here’s what you can do to ensure your organization’s protection:

• Generate awareness and provide cybersecurity training to your employees.
• Enable phishing response tools to help workers promptly report suspicious notifications and unsolicited emails.
• Use highly secure and reliable web hosting and network audit practices against email spoofing and unauthorized accesses.
• Update login credentials and passwords across the board after every few months.
• Use protected VPN networks to keep hackers at bay.

It's Important to Review the Security - Risk of COVID-19 in 2021

You possibly can only think of the number of affected devices that pose a security risk to the corporate network or, worse, have opened up a channel of vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. In both cases, a Band-Aid solution is introduced here because companies decided to devise their device policies to connect their device to the corporate network and start remote work. Here the problem continues; tools issued by the company may comply with some form of security rules or firewall to make the remote experience more efficient or improve the safety of actual workers for workers and the company.

With people working from home, they can no longer benefit from this service, which means it is usually one, and if the service cannot help them, it can help itself where appropriate staff training is needed. In principle, many companies have a policy that employees cannot use these storage solutions at all because the company itself has no control over the files and data that are shared and stored.

Through providing financial support to information technology and training employees for security concerns, such as offering CCIE certification to protect these interests in addition to digital systems. We felt safe, and with good reason. However, a recent survey found that 43.6% of companies have increased the number of cyber-attacks because they allow remote work. Amazingly, people who work from home don’t bother going in and out of the office every day, and companies save tons of money to rent and pay for space, and other resources used by office employees.

Final Thoughts

It is believed that work from home, digital commerce, and virtual meetings have become our new regular, and it doesn’t seem like they’ll be going any time soon. With the massive impact on society and businesses, the pandemic has rocked the digital world to the core by posing cybercrime-related problems through emails all over the globe. With this uncertainty, having a team of experts secure your company’s systems and records is of the utmost importance.