The Best Email Security for the Enterprise

For many organizations, the email is still the number one communication tool for both internal (within the company) and external (with clients, customers and partners) communication.

It’s not easy to replace email (at least not completely) as we are so used to it (we had 40+ years) and we just don’t have the time (or the will) often to try something new. After all, if it works, why change it?

But email is often a prime target for cybercriminals, who carry 90% of all cyberattacks via email. Every year, these attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated and they cost unprepared individuals and businesses billions of dollars.

Just between 2016 and 2019, BEC (Business Email Compromise) resulted in reported global losses of $26 billion in 166,349 reported incidents in that period (FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center).

While individual end-users should no doubt secure their email against email-borne threats, the real targets for criminals are enterprises. In 2018, for instance, 76% of businesses reported being a victim of an email phishing attack and an average phishing attack costs a company $3.8 million.

Enterprise Email Security Solutions

What is the answer to protecting your enterprise’s email from these threats? 

Not using email?

Hardly a solution, as it is one that will severely limit your communication options with shareholders. 

Instead, you need to work on enhancing your email security for the enterprise. 

Of course, that’s not something you get to do overnight. Instead, it’s a process, a journey if you will and it starts with these 6 enterprise email security best practices:

1. Start with the Basics

Email security for enterprises doesn’t have to be complicated. The first step in implementing an effective enterprise email security solution is to get the basics right. That means making sure that you set up a thorough email security solution for your business.

Your enterprise email security solution should be managed completely by the email security provider to free your resources for more productive tasks (getting customers, making sales, etc.) and user-friendly (nothing overly complicated for the end-user is really good).

2. Educate Your Employees

Most companies are worried about outside threats. For instance, they worry that a hacker might breach their database and steal sensitive information about the company and its clients.

And that’s a valid concern. But here’s the thing:

Insider email threats are just as much of a problem (if not a bigger one) as outsider threats.

Between 2018 and 2020, insider threats have gone up by 47%, or from 3,200 to 4,700 (reported at least) according to Panda Security and the cost of these insider threats for businesses was $2.79 million in 2020.

Does that mean your employees can’t be trusted with confidential data and that all they do is steal it? Absolutely not.

Yes, there are angry and malicious employees that will actively seek to harm your company, but by and large, the majority of insider threats (more than two thirds) can be simply attributed to negligence and lack of proper education.

For this reason, it’s important to educate employees in your company on how to protect valuable data and also to bring awareness to email security. This is something that everyone from employee to C-level guys in your organization needs to work on.

Unfortunately, many organizations neglect to educate and train their employees, even though they are that organization’s first line of defense. If it fails, no amount of security solutions will help you.

3. Prevent Phishing Attacks with Sender Authentication

Implementing sender authentication as part of your enterprise email security management is an important step in ensuring defense-in-depth protection, especially against phishing attempts.

Sender authentication answers the question, “is the sender of this email who they claim to be?”. Or are they someone else entirely and just pretend?

In this regard, sender authentication follows certain standards. The three most common such standards are:

• Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which ensures that the message is authentic by providing a digital signature and an encryption key;
• Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which prevents forging the sender address;
• Domain Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC), which combines DKIM and SPF and advises how an email that fails the authentication should be handled.

With all that in mind, look for an enterprise email security solution that combines all three (DKIM, SPF and DMARC) to analyze and track sender reputation.

4. Backup Files

Even the strongest, military-grade enterprise email security solution can fail to a cyberattack. In the last several years, hackers have become incredibly sophisticated and cunning. They know their “trade” well.

A data security breach or ransomware attack that your organization wasn’t ready for can happen at any moment. This is why you shouldn’t leave anything to chance, no matter how small.

Always backup important files to protect them from ransomware, by:

• Keeping backup copies in different locations (kinda like not putting all your eggs in one basket so you don’t break them all if you drop the basket);
• Isolating the backups and putting barriers between the system and the backups (the more hoops the hacker has to go through, the harder for him will be to get the data);
• And, finally, testing your backups regularly for security vulnerabilities.

5. Always Prepare for the Worst

Okay, so you have all these enterprise email security solutions in place that should protect your organization’s email from threats. But do you know how to actually respond when you identify a threat?

What do you do when, for instance, you realize that an employee email has been compromised? Or if a data breach has occurred?

This is where a solid enterprise email security management strategy came  in. Without a clear protocol in place that everybody in your company can follow, it will be much harder to respond to such threats on time or effectively.

Where to Find Email Security for Enterprise that Covers all of This?

Finding an enterprise email security solution that covers all of the above, or even just the majority, seems like an impossible task, but it’s not.

CTemplar is an encrypted email security provider that will ensure that the data you send and receive across the email is protected whether you’re an individual user, a small company of up to 10 employees or a large corporation with hundreds of employees.

For an army-grade enterprise email, check out our Champion Plan, which features 50GB storage, support for 100 hosted domains, Anti-Phishing phrase, Brute-force protection, a Dead-man timer, 2FA and more stuff that will help you secure your enterprise email.
Sign up today for CTemplar and secure your email.