The Small Business Guide to Secure Email

In today’s cyber world, there’s no denying that malicious actors target individuals rather than infrastructure directly. It’s much easier to find a weak link within the company and get access to information and assets through that route. When it comes to cyberattacks – no one is safe. 

According to Deloitte.com, 91% of all cyberattacks begin with a phishing email to an unsuspecting target. Cybercrime is more than just the high-profile attack cases we read in the news. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are also targeted with the same attacks as large enterprises. Hence, businesses of all sizes need secure email solutions for small business to mitigate these attacks. 

This guide will provide you with several ways to protect your business via secure email. But before we dive into that, it’s imperative that you understand what is secure email for small business and how to achieve that?

What is Secure Email?

We’ve talked about business email accounts before, so you already know how they differ from your regular-old Gmail, Microsoft, or Yahoo. Here, we’re talking about protecting the infrastructure that contains all your business emails.

Email security comes in a few components, including email encryption, secure email gateways, and authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

To cover all these aspects, especially the encryption part, there are a few services in the market. Secure email service for small business is like the regular email, but with a few security enhancements. The Standard Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) sends emails as plain text, thus they are extremely vulnerable to outside attacks. Neither IMAP nor POP3 protect the files stored in the email server. You not only need secure message transfer but also the received messages need to be stored in a secure place.

You might be able to secure your email account from hackers via two or multifactor authentication, but you need another layer of defense for protecting your data from unauthorized access. Secure email providers for small businesses offer secured email services.

How does secure email work? Well, it’s simple. When you send a message to a recipient, the secure email algorithm checks it to determine if it needs to be encoded depending on the set criteria. If it meets the requirements, the email is encoded and sent to the recipient. 

Why is Secure Email Important?

Businesses without secured email are easy targets to email phishing attacks. Email security is essential against cyberattacks targeting small businesses via email.

In most cases, email attacks try to lure users into approving a fake transfer request, divulging confidential information, or downloading malicious software that can infect your network or hold your data to ransom. 

No matter the size of your business, a successful email phishing attack can cause catastrophic damages, including financial losses, downtime, and reputation damage. With secure email, third parties or cyberactors find it challenging to hijack your communication, thereby reducing your risk exposure. 

How to Ensure a Secure Email for Small Businesses

Most SMBs neglect email security because of various factors, including lack of budget and IT personnel. Some even use personal emails for work, dispersing their ability to treat the domain and email infrastructure as a holistic entity. In such cases, it would be pointless to even talk about implementing enterprise-class security infrastructure.

Sure, the internet is full of tips and tricks for securing your business email. Still, let’s understand that you only need three steps to achieve your secure email goals: prevent, educate, and respond.

Prevent

Starting from the second you’re setting up your small business email “family” you have to think big. No matter how many email accounts you have, adhering to protocols, doing regular backups, and establishing other best practices will set you up for success. Remember: preventing the disaster is always easier than dealing with the aftermath.

• Create a Cybersecurity Plan: Small businesses should prepare themselves for the worst. Never assume you can’t be a target of cybercrime. Prepare a disaster management plan that includes policies, technologies, procedures, and strategies to address email security and ensure fast response in case of an attack.

• Make Regular Backups: Small businesses should take regular backups of critical data that drives their daily operation. These include payment details, customer information, quotes, and orders. 

• Use Strong and Secure Passwords: Ensure you use a strong and secure password that is difficult to guess. Your password should contain at least 12 characters, including numbers, symbols, lower-case and capital letters. Avoid using the same password across multiple accounts. 

• Use Multi-Factor Authentication: Encourage your employee to implement Multi-Factor Authentication to increase email security. Here, you need more than just your password to access your account. So even if your password is compromised, an attacker will find it difficult to access your account. 

• Implement an Email Retention Policy: Set up a policy for employees to remove any email that’s not needed for business operation. You can set a 60-90-day standard and enforce a policy to ensure compliance.

• Use email encryption: Email encryption is essential. It ensures that only authorized users can read your message. You can install an email certificate like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) or install a software plugin on your email client.

• Set up email authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC): Implementing email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC helps prevent phishing, email spoofing, and other email security issues.

Educate

Your business’s email security is only as strong as its weakest link – the human. Email phishing attackers use different social engineering tactics to manipulate people to do what they want. Thus, it’s critical that you get your employees invested and involved in your secure email strategy. 

• Educate Your Employees: Most email attacks are successful because someone clicks a link or performs an action. That said, it’s crucial to educate yourself and your employees about the signs of phishing emails and their devastating effects. 

• Practice healthy cybersecurity habits: You should educate your staff on healthy cybersecurity habits to ensure better email security. Some of these include:

• • Think twice before clicking on links from unknown sources
  • Confirm request for urgent transfers or private information
  • Always keep your devices and browsers up-to-date
  • If it’s suspicious, report it

Respond

With clients’ trust, reputation, and revenue at stake, it’s vital that small business owners can detect and prevent incidents in progress early. By creating a security incident response strategy, you can prepare for any attacks and swiftly address them. Ensure your employee knows the steps they have to take if an incident or a breach happens.

Final Thoughts

Attackers always target small and medium-sized businesses with fraudulent emails, aiming to steal sensitive data or infect the network with malware. Though small businesses are vulnerable to phishing attacks, implementing the best secure email for small business goes long toward protection. 

Don’t forget to backup critical business data regularly, and use strong passwords and MFA authentication on your account. Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email authentication protocols to strengthen your email security and educate your employees on how to identify and prevent malicious emails.

The post The Small Business Guide to Secure Email appeared first on EasyDMARC.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from EasyDMARC authored by Hasmik Khachunts. Read the original post at: https://easydmarc.com/blog/the-small-business-guide-to-secure-email/