Most organizations use email to communicate internally and with customers. If malicious actors compromise emails and email addresses, it can lead to communication challenges as well as lost customers and businesses.
Additionally, if your organization receives spam emails with malicious links, it can result in cyberattacks and data breaches that will likely cost your organization, depending on its size, hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair the network.
For this reason, it is important to understand the best practices for strong email security. Understanding the best practices will help improve email security and avoid issues related to a lack of it.
Coeo understands the importance of email security and has helped thousands of organizations secure their emails and networks to avoid cyberattacks and data breaches that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair.
By the end of this article, you will understand the best practices for email security and the right solutions for your organization.
The best practices for email security
Email is important for almost every organization to communicate internally, with customers, and with partners. However, if your employees’ emails do not have proper security, it can lead to spam and email addresses being compromised.
To avoid these issues, it is important to understand the best practices for email security. These best practices include:
Create strong email passwords
One of the most important practices to improve email security is to create strong passwords for your employees’ email accounts. However, the criteria for strong passwords have changed in recent years.
Previously, complex passwords that included punctuation and other symbols were considered strong passwords. However, because these passwords are so complex they are difficult to memorize resulting in employees writing them on sticky notes or saving them on their desktop.
This can result in passwords being compromised and emails being logged into by malicious actors. To avoid this, it is safer to use passwords that are less complex but are a phrase with multiple capital letters.
For example, StROngpaSswOrd is a password that is not easy to guess but can be easier to remember and is less complex than m}{4p#P@R9w.
Reuse passwords/login information
Similar to the previous practice, it is important for your organization to avoid using the same password across different accounts.
For example, if your work email password is the same password that is used for your personal accounts it can lead to other accounts being unlocked.
Attackers know that trying reused passwords can unlock multiple accounts. It is important not to reuse passwords for the sake of your corporate emails but also for your own personal information.
Additionally, it is important to avoid sharing login information with other people in the organization. For example, if multiple people have access to the marketing email login, the password can be compromised when employees share the login information.
Use Multifactor Authentication
Multifactor Authentication (MFA) uses more than one method to authenticate a user’s identity when logging into an account. An example of this is receiving a code via text message to your phone and entering the code to authenticate your login.
This can help ensure your email accounts are secure and authenticate the users logging into the emails to avoid malicious actors from receiving access to your email logins.
If your organization has experienced a security breach on your email logins or other logins it may be a good idea to mandate multifactor authentication.
Mandating multifactor authentication across all corporate accounts beyond email logins may be a good idea to help decrease the risk of cyberattacks and data breaches within your organization.
Train employees on email security best practices
If your organization has decided to use these practices, it is important to educate employees on the importance of email security and train them on the best practices to improve this.
Educating employees on these practices and their role in keeping your network and email accounts secure is important in maintaining overall network security.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about email and network security or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Are these practices beneficial for your organization?
Now you understand the best practices to improve email security. However, it is also important to understand whether these best practices will help your organization improve email security.
If your organization has dealt with security breaches in the past, implementing these best practices may be the right decision to prevent a breach or cyberattack from happening again.
Additionally, since your organization likely relies on email to communicate with customers and partners, it is important that you have your email accounts secured to avoid malicious actors breaching your accounts and hindering valuable communication with customers and partners.
However, in the unlikely event your organization does not rely on email for daily work tasks and communication you may not need these or if you already have advanced email security services in place you may already be using these best practices.
Determining whether your organization should implement best practices to improve email security
Now you understand the best practices that enable you to improve email security and whether these practices are beneficial for your organization. This will help you determine whether these best practices are appropriate for your organization to implement.
If your organization relies on email communication to perform daily functions, it is important that email accounts are secured to prevent malicious actors from accessing email logins.
Malicious actors can steal email logins and destroy the reputation of an organization. This can lead to lost customers, partners, and revenue.
For this reason, avoiding vulnerabilities in your email accounts and strengthening security is important. Understanding the best practices to improve email security and whether these practices are appropriate for your organization can help you do that.
Coeo understands how important email is to the effective communication of organizations and has helped thousands of customers improve their email security as well as their network security.
We want you to understand how these practices can help and if they are appropriate for your organization.
If you would like to speak with our team to learn more about email and network security or ask any questions you may have you can schedule an appointment.
Now that you are aware of the best practices to secure your email accounts, read this article to learn about the network security initiatives your company should be focusing on:
