With hackers and spammers constantly finding new ways to exploit weaknesses in email systems, business and email experts have had to fight fire with fire and innovate the way businesses can protect themselves from cyber threats. It’s essential for businesses to be able to rely on email as a secure business communication tool. But as malicious threats to business security become increasingly sophisticated, what are the next steps in preventing data breaches via email? Here we examine the main trends and developments in email security that we’ve seen so far in 2014, with half an eye on the future.
Cloud-based systems
The increase in the number of companies using cloud computing has certainly helped increase business efficiency and ease of access for all employees who can now work from almost anywhere, but it isn’t without its risks. Many cloud systems are far from secure and certainly at risk from data breaches via malicious emails. Most cloud providers such as Google, have looked to build security into the architecture of their systems (Google Apps has a range of security settings), but it’s certainly worth looking at email security providers who have a centralized solution that can deal with email being accessed from multiple points across the web.
Mobile devices
Which brings us nicely to another major change in email security over the last couple of years. With more employees than ever now having access to email and documents on mobile devices, email security is being tested as never before. Firewalls are becoming more porous as people access central email from iPads, tablets and phones, which means it’s important that network email security is tight across all devices, as well as in the office.
Organizations are more susceptible to phishing
It’s clear that organizations, large and small, are now becoming victims of phishing attacks with worrying regularity. Phishing is where a scam artist pretends to be from a trusted source via email to try and gain access to sensitive financial and personal data. In recent months there has been a particular trend for hackers to masquerade as IT support. It is estimated that 8 in 10 companies have been subjected to a web-borne attack of this kind in the past couple of years. It remains vital to balance making information accessible to employees and having a solid email security solution in place to minimize potentially costly liability.
Migrate to new versions of software
It’s easy to keep ploughing on using the same software and email security systems for year after year, but with the fast-moving pace of business threats and software development, it’s vital to keep your systems upgraded. With older versions of software being increasingly attacked, it’s certainly worth looking at migrating to Microsoft Exchange, with the many security benefits it offers for email and business documents. Find out more about Exchange migration from Mimecast to see how this can be achieved.
So there are 2014’s main email security developments. Make sure that you don’t get caught out. Business owners should be looking for a reputable vendor who can help them ensure email is an enormous benefit to their business and not a vulnerability that can be exploited.
