6 Qualities of a Secure Email Service

6 Qualities of a Secure Email Service

269 billion emails are sent each day, flooding business inboxes with everything from marketing material and co-worker correspondence to sales queries and spam. No matter what industry you’re in or the size of your business, each person in your team relies extensively on this single tool to stay updated, connected and in communication with our teams, clients and professional networks. Yet it is also a gateway for everything from spam to phishing attacks, malware attacks and cloud security breaches. Email security services are critical for closing these vulnerabilities and keeping email – and your inbox – a secure place to communicate, work and deliver results. Here’s some insight into what a secure email service should do for your business, school or organisation.

#1 – Protection Against Malicious Attachments

When it comes to secure email services, filtering is just the first level of protection against attachments that contain malware and viruses. Advanced spam filtering should be combined with active monitoring of collaborative software like Microsoft Teams and Word in order to notify users of suspicious activity rapidly and effectively.

#2 – Reviewing of Internal Email Traffic

It’s not just email coming from external sources that should be monitored, as malware can be transferred easily within an organisation’s network either by intent or due to human error. This is an especially important feature because we naturally have more trust in an email that comes from our co-worker or from within the company than one without.

#3 –Detection of Snowshoe Spam

Snowshoe spam is a technique hackers use to bypass email spam filters by spreading spam output across multiple IPs and domains, thereby diluting the spam load and making it more difficult for the filter to detect. Good quality email security solutions should address this issue by detecting the unusual spreading patterns.

#4 – Cloud Account Monitoring

Many organisations leverage the benefits of the cloud for email as well as data storage and management, but the cloud – like any online service – is vulnerable to malicious attacks. Cloud security monitoring should integrate email threats and cloud threats to help identify compromised accounts quickly and show where the breach has occurred, as well as detecting data leakage and malicious third-party apps. This is because hackers are starting to develop web applications that impersonate trusted platforms, asking users to log in or supply particular data that then puts control of the account into the hacker’s hands.

#5–Flagging of Suspicious Sentiments

One vector of attack in malicious emails is the sending of emails that impersonates people within the organisation, usually those with a high rank. Monitoring the sentiment of email content is a new and interesting technology which examines the role of the person within the organisation and flags emails that contain content and meta data that does not align with this role. This machine learning technology is especially critical in addressing the threat of spear phishing attacks.

#6 – Training

Employees are both the main vulnerability of email security and the frontline in creating effective defence. With employees working remotely, bringing personal devices onto the network and working on more digital platforms than ever before, it is critical that they are properly trained in email security. This includes learning to question and verify emails from superiors that have unusual instructions (particularly around providing assistance or sending money), learning to recognise common phishing tactics, and developing safe practices around emails and email attachments. Running regular training programs and simulations in addition to having a high-quality email security solution is critical.

Secure Your Email – Speak to Your Managed IT Services Partner

An experienced IT security provider like Otto IT has the experience, expertise and solutions in place to provide businesses of every size with comprehensive security against email-based phishing attacks, malware and ransomware attacks. Not only can we implement comprehensive IT security policies and solutions, we can also train your employees on safe computer use and cybercrime prevention. For more information, please contact us today.