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Email security: do's and don'ts for secure email

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Alex Nilson
Email security: do's and don'ts for secure email

Every day we send and receive hundreds of emails containing confidential, sensitive, compromised, etc. Have you ever stopped to think about what happens to that information? Are you protecting it safely? Do you have email security?

Email is one of the most common communication channels in the professional environment through which we send passwords, information about clients, work reports, contracts... But many people forget that it is also one of the most common sources of cyber attacks and the introduction of malware in any company.

Having a good email security solution is basic, but not infallible. So here is a list of do's and don'ts for us as employees to improve email security.

Be careful with passwords and credentials

Even with a secure email provider, we have to protect our privileged credentials. Let's use strong, unique passwords that are different from those of our peers. Don't share them with everyone; just one or two team members. And don't make them remembered on the web!

80% of security breaches involve privileged credentials, according to various studies.

Be wary of the sender

If you receive an attachment in your first email, be wary! Many times that attachment is a gateway to give hackers access.

Be careful when opening emails even if the sender is known. More and more BEC attacks are impersonating someone from our own company and trying to infect us with viruses.

And let's be aware of the risks of opening email attachments.

Check the URLs

Many times we are sent a link via email and we don't do ip lookup location, and examine the URLs. This makes us prone to malicious phishing. Cybercriminals exploit this weakness to make a dent in our system.

To avoid this, we need to do something as simple as placing ourselves over the link and checking it before accessing it. Look for suspicious elements, like plus or minus characters... and be careful!

Avoiding Spam

Any email received that we consider being spam, we have to add it to the spam list and send it directly to the trash. Never reply to a spam email. By doing so you are giving them clues that your account is active and may become an easy target for future attacks.

Use the hidden copy

If you have to send an email to multiple recipients the best thing to do is to send it to yourself and put a hidden copy to everyone else. This way we avoid that anyone can get valid email addresses to send spam or malicious messages to.

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Alex Nilson
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