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Friday, March 29, 2024

How Businesses Can Successfully Invest in Email Security

By Adriaan Brits. Originally published at ValueWalk.

Internal Security Controls

Email hacking is a significant problem for businesses, particularly small ones. Hacking statistics collected as part of the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report indicated that email phishing caused 95% of all security breaches. Naturally, this means that one of the most paramount business practices to be followed is investment in email security. 

Ensuring that businesses have effective security measures in place to protect against these email attacks is an important barrier that helps to stave off malware threats and data breaches. That being said, not all measures to improve email security are made equal, and there are some glaring issues with the approaches taken today.

This article will outline the need for email security, before moving on to explore how businesses can successfully invest in email security.

Need For Email Security

One of the paramount benefits of investing in resolute email security measures is the assurance it provides the organization with that their and their customers’ data cannot be captured and released. This can be done in several ways, one of which is an email gateway; all this does is prevent malicious emails from even being delivered, so phishing is nullified.

Another means with which businesses attempt to protect themselves from these email threats is encryption. This is a vital tool used by businesses of all sizes, as it does not need to be complicated in order to be effective. Several encryption services offer powerful services for an economic cost that make emails far more secure.

The ultimate goal of email encryption is to make certain that they are never viewed by someone the email was unintended for. One simple way this is achieved is by forcing users to provide login credentials in order to read the contents and data of the email.

The need for email protection has mirrored the increased number of malware attacks against corporate emails in the hope that encryption will act as a shield to prevent prying eyes from compromising sensitive emails.

How To Effectively Secure Email

Unfortunately, despite the interest from businesses in securing their emails, a study from Echoworx conducted by Forrester Consulting indicated there are a number of ways in which these methods fall short.

Not Cost Effective

The first of the study’s main flaws with the encryption industry was that, due to an absence of automation in this method, all the principal options available to businesses were far too costly and involved too much manual work.

Ignoring Knock-On Effects

The second issue was the underestimation by businesses of the true benefits of ensuring their emails are properly encrypted. Of course, it is beneficial not to have the confidential contents of private business emails leaked, but what is more important is the dent in customer confidence that a data breach results in.

Particularly in a time when everyone is hyper aware of these occurrences, if a business demonstrates the seriousness with which it treats the task of protecting its emails, it instills heightened confidence of consumers in the company in question. Furthermore, a business will only continue to reap positive knock-on effects if they seek out ways to improve the user experience in this way.

Missing The Main Focus

Finally, it was outlined by the study that these strategies missed the reason that should be underpinning and motivating any decision to improve email security. In a similar vein to the way in which businesses missed the positive knock-on effects on user experience, this factor should also be the main focus of any improvements in security efforts.

This assertion was backed by the opinions of the executives of over 200 global companies, including Echoworx’s own CEO: Michael Ginsberg. Furthermore, Ginsberg believes the security issue surrounding emails to be extremely convoluted since they can be a difficult form of data to protect due to their transferability and receipt by a number of parties.

Final Statement

On balance, recent research has suggested that companies are expressing a clear interest in investing in the improvement of their email security. However, if they are to do so in a way that is actually meaningful and effective, they must focus on resolving a few major flaws associated with the methods they adopt.

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