Introduction,
In the present 21st century, day in day out most of our official conversations, acknowledgments, or advertisements are circulated throughout the world to every intended person via E-mail. Every individual has his email address.
Today’s fastest way of communication is considered as email and an email address is required to receive an email, and that address is unique to the user. Some people use internet-based applications and some use programs on their computer to access and store emails.
What is email security?
Email security refers to the collective measures used to secure the access and content of an email account or service. It allows an individual or organization to protect the access of all the email addresses/accounts of his organization. It’s the responsibility of the mail service provider to ensures email security by using strong password and access control mechanisms on an email server by encrypting and digitally signing email messages when in the inbox or transit or from a subscriber email address.
Why email-security?
Emails are an effective initial infection vector because almost every company uses email Over 90% of cyber-attacks begin with a phishing email, and people easily fall trap of believing an email to be legitimate. Hackers can easily enter into a corporate network and pass over the network in parallel and infect the whole organization.
In what ways e-mail can be attacked?
Email hacking is a widespread problem that all email service users face. Can you call Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc. secure email services? Well, they’re definitely secure in the way that your data is safe from outside attackers but always it’s said that “Humans are the weakest link in the security” and attack may happen from inside.
-> Lazy to log out: When mail is accessed via a public computer, directly closing the tab without logging out will lead to a big risk where these machines may be infected with malware or may have key-logging spyware installed on them.
-> Not strong passwords: Users not having a strong password set while accessing their mail might fall for email hacking where hackers might try brute-force for passwords. The correct and the best way to set passwords are, having passwords Between 8 and 64 characters, depending on the allowed length, and contain at least three, but preferably all.
-> Access via public Wi-Fi: Public Wi-Fi is always prone to be dangerous and untrusted. Accessing either official or personal mail can easily be intercepted by a hacker and it’s a potential risk for both in-person and the organization.
-> Accessing phishing links: Accessing the links either from unknown mail or spoofed to be acting like a trusted mail will land to hackers den which leads to complete compromise of security and filled with potentials risks.
->Email bombing: Attack that involves sending massive amounts of messages to your e-mail address. If an attacker has gained access to your account and has performed unethical activity then he may bombard your mailbox with a junk mailbox so that you can go unnoticed with important mails is one of the small advantages of e-mail bombing.
->BEC(Business E-mail Compromise): As many companies are working from home during the pandemic and relying on email, security becomes increasingly important to protect against BEC.
BEC fraud is a scheme used by cybercriminals to gain access to a legitimate business email through social engineering or computer intrusion to impersonate an employee – often someone who can authorize payments – and instructs others in the company to transfer funds on their behalf.
How to improve your E-mail security ?
Organizations should always prefer to use secured mail services. Services that offer end-to-end encryption, multifactor authentication, PGP (pretty good privacy), encrypt emails, insist strong passwords from employees and remind employees if they are sending any information to external entities, sanitize emails frequently and remember to patch up the servers and client applications very frequently and follow DMARC policies.
-> Multifactor authentication: As the name goes by, a user has to login to his mail by authenticating more than once to successfully login, This acts as an extra shield to prevent himself from falling into traps.
-> PGP (pretty good privacy): A PGP service generates both public and private keys. To encrypt the message, you enter the public key, and the recipient can only open it with a private key. You can either generate a new set of keys or import an existing set.
->SPF (Sender policy framework): One of the several solutions for protecting mail is SPF, which domain owners and ISPs use for email authentication and ensuring delivery. It’s based on the return value from the mail originating server. However, DMARC is another approach that compensates for the drawbacks of SPF.
DKIM ( Domain Keys Identified Mail): E-mail authentication standard created to allow senders to connect to their domain with an email, through cryptographic authentication which, in turn, proves the legitimacy of said email to the receiver.
->DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): It’s a technical standard that helps protect email senders and recipients from spam, spoofing, and phishing. DMARC allows an organization to publish a policy that defines its email authentication practices and provides instructions to receiving mail servers for how to enforce them.
->Phishing Simulations: One of the effective ways of educating employees is to make them go through the incident and inform them they are wrong and spread awareness among them.
Conclusion:
It is always important to keep the mail servers updated with the latest patch and make sure all the above rules are followed with respect to mail security However it’s not only about the services organizations have subscribed for, it always depends on how educated employees are, regarding the security practices they follow in their daily routine.
