Whether sending or receiving, most businesses engage in daily email exchanges, as emails are an indispensable tool for internal and external communication in the day-to-day running of a company.
However, this very popular medium, communication via email, also presents the greatest attack surface for cybercrime. For example, through phishing emails – emails that look trustworthy but are fraudulent – malware and other malicious software quickly find their way into your company's data system.
For this reason, it is all the more important that you implement a robust email security strategy to increase email security within your company and thereby protect your confidential business data and systems.
This is best achieved by simultaneously employing various technological IT security measures for email communication within your company:
- Spam filters and antivirus software: Automated systems assist in detecting and blocking suspicious emails. This allows harmful content to be identified before it reaches the inbox of one of your employees.
- Email encryptionEmail encryption can protect sensitive information, ensuring that the content can only be viewed by authorised individuals.
- Digital signatureA digital signature ensures that the email remains unchanged and was sent by the „right“ person.
- Authentication protocolsTechnologies such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) are used for email authentication and prevent spoofing attacks (impersonation).
However, even the best technical foundation, be it a firewall or specific email encryption, is useless if the human element itself is the weakest link in the IT security chain. This is because a single hasty click can have serious consequences, despite technological IT security precautions.
The methods that cybercriminals use to access data and/or install malware on respective devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
With these two tactics, cybercriminals exploit the „human“ vulnerability:
#1 Social Engineering – human behaviour is exploited
Cybercriminals exploit our emotional nature. Under pressure, driven by fear, pity, or trust, users are tricked by cybercriminals into opening phishing emails with infected links or attachments. It is not uncommon for confidential data, such as passwords or bank details, to be revealed as a result. Social engineering – a scam that works extensively, can cause great damage, and poses an enormous risk to companies' email security.
#2 Spoofing Attacks – Feigning False Facts
Another tactic involves so-called „spoofing attacks“, where cybercriminals „steal“ the identity of a trusted person or employee and send urgent emails, often containing links. Recipients of such an email usually don't suspect who they are actually communicating with. Therefore, it's important to pay attention to details in emails. In cases of unusual address, writing style, lack of context, and incorrect/missing signatures, your employees should delete the email and report the incident to an authorised administrator/IT security officer within the company. If there are concerns about IT security, the „supposed“ sender should also be contacted personally via a separate, trusted channel (e.g. telephone) to inquire whether the email really came from them.
Generally speaking, be cautious with email communication
To ensure that you can rely on your employees as well as the technology to increase your company's e-mail security, certain IT security standards must be adhered to.
This includes regularly educating and sensitising employees, colleagues and customers to the risks associated with email traffic. Unfortunately, many people are still not sufficiently aware of the dangers posed by email communication, even though news of hacker attacks and malware in companies and government agencies are on the rise. This is why regular IT security training should not be neglected. This is the only way to ensure up-to-date knowledge of the constantly evolving cybercrime, so that phishing emails in the form of social engineering or spoofing can be recognised and, in the best case, even fended off.
Regular IT security training should be used to raise awareness of the risks in email traffic in order to minimise the threat of email attacks. Even before opening an email, the sender should be critically checked for authenticity. If it is an unknown external sender, caution should always be exercised and the origin of the email should be confirmed, otherwise it should remain unopened.
Employees should also urgently have expert IT contact persons to whom they can easily turn if they have any doubts about the authenticity of an email or a sender.
Consequently, a functioning interaction between technology and people is necessary and must be checked again and again to ensure basic security in your company's email communication.
