In today’s always-connected society, keeping your email communications secure and efficient is very important. And, should you be running a business, the risks can be much greater if you don’t have the right precautions in place to protect the data of your operations, employees, and even customers. With the spike in hacks, malicious code, and other troubles in recent years, it’s no wonder that bolstering your email security is such a critical step to take.
At KWIC Internet, we’re proud to deliver highly secure, performant, and future-proofed internet services to businesses in need, including sophisticated email security features if needed. In addition, what are some other ways you can apply to your communications practices to stay safer online? Here are several great tips to help get you started!
Get to Know How Cyber Crime Works
Hackers, scammers, and the like love to constantly innovate to get the edge over the latest software updates and security features. However, knowledge is power for both sides, meaning if you take the time to research the latest trends in cybercrime, you may be able to identify areas where you can boost your defences! For instance, did you know that business email compromise (BEC) attacks are one of the biggest threats to your operations at the moment? Also, do you understand how different types of threats work? Ransomware, phishing attacks, and malware all have their own unique traits and red flags to watch out for.
Managing Internal and External Access to Credentials
Let’s say that you operate a prominent local business and several company email addresses are made readily available on social media pages to encourage contacting your team members for quotes and such. If you’re doing this, you’re flinging the doors wide open to a whole lot of risk. Instead, consider creating a single, actively monitored account used for the “contact us” part of your website or social media pages. This is also a lot more clean-cut for users as they won’t have to question who they should email with a query. All in all, never make your personal email available if you can avoid it, including if it’s tied to your company’s email system.
Watch What You Open!
No matter whether you’re a small start-up or run a chain of locations, you should never respond to suspicious emails, let alone open them. Flagging as phishing spam and deleting is the best thing you can do, keeping your valuable data and private credentials safe. There have been many cases of employees falling victim to phoney senders pretending to be their employer and, as popularized on the news, instances of individuals falling for CRA tax scam emails that utilize a hosted temporary site that’s a perfect match to the authentic one.
Don’t Be Generous
On that note of tax scams and the like, there’s a golden rule any proactive business owner or employee should follow at all times: Don’t give away your SIN number, internal operational data, financial information, addresses or otherwise. There are official, tightly regulated ways to transmit this data, and nobody should be reaching out to you and asking for it online. If an email’s subject or opening line comes across as suspicious, don’t be afraid to delete it. Also, don’t forget, there are plenty of competitors out there looking for that golden nugget of data that can be used to take a bite out of your target audience.
Avoid Public Connections and Bad Passwords
That coffee shop’s open Wi-Fi signal where your remote commuters like to frequent might be handy and all, but it’s far from secure. Any open public networks like that are great opportunities for online criminals to slither in and siphon valuable data. If that network were to be hacked due to insufficient security in place (such as no login password or making one readily available), then every device connected to it is put at immediate risk. Similar precautions should apply to corporate networks that have less-secure WLAN passwords: Get those updated and leave no stone unturned!
Sign Up for Dedicated Email Security Services
While we could easily list a dozen more ways to improve your email security on your own, reaching out to expert providers for dedicated email account protection is a great investment. Implemented at the network level, they actively monitor for risks such as spam, viruses, worms, denial of service attacks, and much more. For instance, KWIC Internet Email Security Services incorporate highly advanced security technologies to keep your accounts safe, including Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall. Additionally, we’re happy to provide advanced domain security services to safeguard your email server and site hosting data. Plus, domain settings can be tweaked to your liking to ensure you remain in full control.
Want to learn more about our network security features? Reach out to the team at KWIC today. When it comes to keeping your business email communications safe and secure in 2020 and beyond, there’s no such thing as being overprotective!
