What You Need To Know About Email Security To Keep Your Organization’s Information Assets Secure

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The world is becoming increasingly online. As people move towards using emails as a means of communication, hackers are also shifting towards novel methods of committing a crime.

Emails remain the most preferred method used by these cybercriminals to infiltrate into your network and corrupt your data. Therefore, using a secured email gateway service is the ideal way to tackle these crimes.

What Is A Secure Email Gateway Service?

Email-borne threats are becoming extremely common today. Usually, a day does not pass without receiving some spam mail or the other. Such emails present a risk to our data. Therefore, it is advisable to have a secured email gateway to protect your business from malicious content in such emails from reaching the intended recipient.

A secure email gateway service uses a robust framework of technologies to protect businesses from such email-borne threats. These email gateway solutions act as a firewall to scan both incoming and outgoing emails for any malicious content.

How Email Gateway Works

We have seen the email gateway definition. Now, let us learn how email gateway works to your benefit. Usually, the secured email gateways come with four security features. They are email archiving, email content filtering service, spam filtering, and virus or malware blocking.

Email archiving

Email archiving helps with issues like storage and compliance regulations. Most of the business organizations face problems with email compliance. Email archiving is the ideal email gateway solution to keep emails secure for extended periods. As email archiving involves usage of cloud storage, space should not be an issue at all.

Email filtering service

Generally, organizations employ email filtering services to the outbound emails sent by users within the hierarchy. It is to prevent sharing of sensitive documents with external recipients. This service also involves blocking of specific images or keywords that attackers send through emails.

Spam filtering

Spam filtering is the most focused area of email security. There are different ways of blocking spam. The most common method of spam filtering involves a pre-filtering technology to quarantine emails received from unknown spammers. Most of the spam emails use preferred keywords. The pre-filtering technology can detect such specific keywords and links that could take users to malicious sites if they click on it. It is also possible to flag spam messages and block such senders.

Virus/Malware Blocking

Occasionally, emails with virus or malware can enter your systems through emails. A secure email gateway service scans every email for such malware and prevents it from gaining access. However, it requires antivirus solutions to be up to date with the latest threat patterns or characteristics.

What Are The Best Email Security Practices?

Organizations need adopting a two-pronged approach involving employee education and security protocols as part of their email security processes and practices.

Employee education is the best way to approach email security. Phishing attacks are frequent over emails. Employees should be aware of such security risks and avoid falling victim to such hacking attempts.
Having strong passwords is imperative for email security. It is also crucial to keep changing these passwords frequently.
Another method of ensuring email security is to use email encryption for both content and attachments.
Organizations should ensure the implementation of the best security services if they allow employees to access official emails on personal devices.
Scanners and tools are necessary to prevent email containing malware or malicious files from reaching the users.
Data protection solutions can help to identify sensitive data and prevent its loss through email.

What Should End Users Do To Observe Email Security?

One should refrain from opening email attachments or clicking on links received from unknown senders.
It is advisable to have strong email passwords and change them frequently.
Avoid sending sensitive information by email.
Install the latest antivirus software and spam filters.
One should not access official emails from public WiFi connections.

Email security is of critical importance to all organizations. It is better to have a paid email gateway service than go for the email gateway free services.