8 Email Security Best Practices To Follow in 2024

During the pandemic, the world shifted from working from the office to working from home, and communication between people changed from verbal to email. This shift increased the attack surface for hackers and showed how vital Email security is and how it is now more critical than ever.

Email security ranked the top IT security project of 2021 in the Greathorn 2021 Email Security Benchmark study. Therefore, you must take substantial steps to safeguard your marketing emails and some of the best email security solutions. But, before getting into how we can make our email secure, we first need to understand what email security is.

What is Email Security? 

Email security is the technique and tool used to protect email accounts and communications. Email security ensures the successful delivery of emails from one inbox to another and that the messages are delivered safely without tampering with the Confidentiality, availability, and integrity of the message.

What is the Significance of Email Security practices?

1. Prevent

Integrate email gateway protection, API-based inbox security, and security awareness training to prevent email threats. 

2. Detect

Detect suspicious behavior and threats within your email infrastructure before they harm your system. 

3. Respond

With automatic email response and quick detection tools, reduce the effect of any risks that reach users.
Email is used to spread approximately 92% of all viruses. Every day, 15 billion spam emails are sent, accounting for around 45% of all emails.  Furthermore, 95% of company email hack losses ranged from $250 to $984,855.

As a result, adopting appropriate security practices is critical. Now that we’ve understood what email security is and its significance, we’ll move on to the best practices to ensure email security.

1. Use 2-factor Authentication

It is one of the easiest and most effective security measures. 2FA ensures that a user enters two pieces of identifiable information before signing in, making it extremely hard for the hackers to get into the account and perform any malicious activities.

Secure Your Organisation with Email Security Solution

2. Only Use Trusted Wi-Fi Networks

The most common target for hackers is public Wi-Fi networks. Suppose you use an unfamiliar or publicly available network to access your email. Anyone could potentially track your actions and acquire access to personal information in that situation.

Suppose the hacker can track your activities and gain access to confidential information. In that case, the hacker can not only login to your email account but also steal company data and send emails to your colleagues asking for personal information and misuse it. Hence, always use trusted networks. 

3. Have Email Authentication Standards

Email authentication standards secure the enterprise from becoming victims of spam, spoofing, and phishing attacks. These protocols give you control over your domain utilization and who attempts to attack it.
Listing down three email authentication standards for you:  

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
  • Domain Keys Identified Mails (DKIM)
  • Message Authentication, Reporting, and Compliance

Suggested Reading: 6 Cloud Security Challenges You Should Know In 2024

4. Always Investigate Emails Before Clicking

Only open attachments and links from the people you know and research the message to ensure it is legitimate. By typing the subject line into a search engine, you may find out whether other people have received a similar email and flagged it as possibly harmful.  

5. Consider Implementing DMARC 

Phishing attacks are observable with DMARC email security, giving you complete visibility into your email channels. It also safeguards your company against spoofing and brand misuse. To achieve excellent security, however, you must combine DMARC, SPF, and DKIM

6. Create a Backup of Critical Files

It is preferable to make a backup of vital and private files ahead of time since this reduces the potential for harm and devastation if your systems and network are compromised. In rare circumstances, though, ransomware versions may go unnoticed for weeks. They can also delete backups after they’ve been activated. As a result, make numerous copies of your critical files and practice restoration exercises regularly.

7. Create Awareness about Recent Attacks & Scams

Use your blogs or FAQs to inform your consumers about email fraud.
Here are some actions you may take to educate your consumers about the dangers of email cybercrime:   

  • Always include a warning at the bottom of your emails, instructing recipients on how to identify phony or spoof communications.
  • Create a blog article on your website that addresses email scams and how your consumers can fall into the trap. 
  • Create FAQ pages and respond to most inquiries and concerns about email fraud.   

You must explain and demonstrate to your consumers what actual spam looks like. Emphasize the necessity of double-checking who is sending them a message. Also, advise the user not to click on any unknown source’s link or file. 

8. Use an Email Security Solution

In addition to all of the best practices, it is always beneficial for an enterprise to use the best email security solution like ours (ACE’s) Investing in this type of solution guarantees a safe and secure inbox and comes with an array of features like attachment defense, URL defense, Sandboxing, etc. Click here to know more about ACE’s email security solution or chat with our experts.

Conclusion

Your aim should always be to keep your company secure. Achieving the finest email security solution for your organization sometimes demands a multi-level approach that incorporates many practical techniques outlined above. Using only one strategy might not provide enough protection in the long run.
Combining current cybersecurity threat knowledge and the appropriate software and solutions will increase the probability of protecting your organization from cybersecurity risks. Get in touch with our solutions expert today!

About Nolan Foster

With 20+ years of expertise in building cloud-native services and security solutions, Nolan Foster spearheads Public Cloud and Managed Security Services at Ace Cloud Hosting. He is well versed in the dynamic trends of cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Foster offers expert consultations for empowering cloud infrastructure with customized solutions and comprehensive managed security.

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