Are you aware of the importance of corporate email security? Business emails contain sensitive data, making them a large attack surface. Learn why it is Critical.
Have you ever wondered how powerful email is? The number of global email users is expected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025. While communication is taking various shapes and forms, and we have several instant communication platforms within our reach, emails have managed to stay essential in the corporate world. It offers users a fast, organized and sophisticated way to communicate with their colleagues and coworkers worldwide. However, despite all the advantages, emails do have some strong drawbacks, such as security vulnerabilities. Since businesses trust email for their corporate communication, ensuring business email security tops the charts.
Emails: The Number One Threat Vector
The widespread use of emails has also made it the leading cause of the spread of malware and cyber-attacks. Several studies have shown that on average a person receives around 100 emails per day. Employees’ mailboxes are constantly flooded with emails, giving them very less time to verify the source or the authenticity of the email. Hackers take advantage of this very factor to break into employees’ systems and access their corporate networks.
Phishing is the most common form of email cyber attack. According to a report, 83% of the organizations experienced email-based phishing attacks in 2021. The same report also states that 42% of employees admitted to clicking on malicious links.
Why Is It Crucial for Businesses to Secure Their Emails?
Hackers attempt to trick employees into clicking on malicious links or entering personal and professional information over emails. There are several ways in which hackers try to break into users’ systems and corporate networks. Some of the most common types of email-cyber attacks are as follows.
1. Phishing attacks
Phishing attacks are of diverse types, each of which appears to come from a legitimate source, popular brand or a reputed person, asking for users to click on malicious links or enter their personal details. Once the user clicks on such links or gives in to entering his/her personal details, such emails spread malicious codes into the victim’s device. Malware, spyware and adware are all technologies used by hackers to break into the user’s system or gather critical information such as credentials to commit payment frauds.
2. Business Email Compromise
When hackers gain illegal access to legitimate email IDs to impersonate people to get employees to execute certain activities is it known as a business email compromise. CEO fraud is an example of business email compromise, in which an email impersonating the CEO demands employees to enter their details or click on websites and malicious links.
3. Spam
Although spam in itself is not a harmful activity. It is an advertorial technique to promote products and services to a customer base. However, such spam or junk mail is often used as a medium to spread malware and viruses. You should be careful about your domain security and regularly use the DMARC report analyzer to avoid mail spamming activities. Fortunately, saving your inbox from spam is possible. Read this article to learn how to avoid spam.
Why Do Most Companies Ignore Corporate Email Security?
1. Overestimating the security offered by email services
Popular email services such as Gsuite, Office 365, Zimbra, etc. come bundled with their set of security settings. However, these settings may not be powerful enough to detect advanced security vulnerabilities. It’s advisable to enhance your email security by integrating compatible DMARC solutions.
2. Additional security burden
Some companies follow effective practices on how to create an email but see third-party email security solutions as an added investment. Businesses refrain from taking this burden on themselves. But what needs to be realized here, is that the cost of data breaches and legal fines, and restoration costs add up to much more than what a simple email security solution could have cost.
3. Businesses don’t see themselves as targets
Most small and medium-sized businesses do not consider themselves to be the potential victims of email-based cyber crimes. This is a big misconception. Businesses of all sizes have experienced cyber attacks via emails. A report states that 28% of small businesses were victims of cyber attacks.
How Does Scalefusion Contribute to Business Email Security?
Keeping in mind the threat landscape, it is best for businesses to opt for email security solutions that offer anti-phishing, anti-malware and protection against other email-bourne attack vectors. But as they say, prevention is better than cure. Most businesses use mobile device management (MDM) solutions which help them provision their devices and push extensive security policies. Another way to prevent your employees from falling prey to email-based cyber attacks is to ensure that they enroll all their devices with your MDM solution and comply with all your enterprise security policies.
Scalefusion MDM offers Conditional Email Access for IceWarp and Exchange Online to help businesses ensure that their employees have enrolled their devices with the MDM platform. With this, access to corporate mailboxes is disabled for all employees who fail to enroll their devices with Scalefusion.
How does this secure business emails against cyber attacks? It does not directly offer protection against malware or phishing attacks. But it certainly ensures that corporate mailboxes are not accessed by unauthorized individuals. This plays a vital role in reinforcing email security for companies that have adopted BYOD management.
Know all about Scalefusion’s Conditional Email Access here.
Closing Lines
Emails are a large attack surface that can land your business in trouble. Once hackers are successful in breaking into your corporate network, data breaches followed by a stream of financial penalties and lawsuits are inevitable. When there’s so much at stake, it is best to not take your email security lightly. In addition to an efficient MDM solution, it is advisable for businesses to implement an email security solution.
