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Emails have become one of the main forms of communication in the corporate environment, facilitating contact with employees, clients, managers and suppliers. However, lack of control over e-mail services can lead to many organizational problems, such as spam, virus-spreading, loss of business-sensitive information, and so on.
Next, learn more about these and other issues that can be mitigated by applying features associated with email security.
Occurrence of viruses and derivatives
One of the most serious problems that affect corporate email security is the spread of viruses. Many e-mails, sent by unknown senders, contain attachments or malicious content, which when executed can contaminate the equipment and bring incalculable damage to the company.
Although viruses in attached files are becoming rarer, due to the evolution of formats over time, they can still cause problems in situations when the user has little instruction and the environment has no adequate controls. This means that well-known executable files or scripts with execution instructions still pose a risk to a large number of companies.
Receiving spam
Another major problem with the lack of control over corporate e-mail is the incidence of spam, which can be translated as any message sent without recipient’s consent. These messages generally have commercial purposes, but in many cases contain malicious information.
Spam affect corporate e-mail service in several ways. The most well-known is inbox pollution, which can be associated to productivity as collaborators spend time removing unsolicited e-mail. This activity can also cause another problem, which is the undue removal of legitimate emails among so many spams.
Keeping a corporate e-mail service away from spam is directly related to productivity, reliability of the platform as a means of communication inside and outside the company, which ends up generating considerable savings with the use of telephone and other more expensive platforms. So having a good anti-spam tool is one way to minimize negative business impacts.
Phishing messages
Phishingis a malicious practice that aims to obtain mostly confidential data from individuals and companies. These data can be e-mail passwords, bank information, passwords for accessing systems, etc.
The platform primarily used remains e-mail. Instead of attaching malicious code or silly e-mails that can be easily discarded, phishing in many cases has well-formatted messages, and even experts have difficulty identifying its authenticity.
The most frequently used and increasingly harmful attack is bank phishing, which has the purpose of inducing the user to pass on information about their banking accesses, making fraud effective.
Phishing is a major threat to companies and has an immediate financial impact, so it is extremely important that, in addition to being an appropriate tool to avoid receiving this type of e-mail, collaborators receive training and guidance in rejecting them.
Excessive attachment size
Although email service is not designed to exchange files, it is impossible to think of it without this facility. However, lack of control over the size of attachments can interfere with the operation of email services, causing excessive consumption of the company’s internet resource. The consequence is a temporary slowness that will naturally affect other services that depend on the internet.
The use of e-mail service, as well as policy of access and control of attachments should be part of the security policy of any company, avoiding wasted resources and loss of sensitive information.
Loss or leakage of information
Just as e-mail is practical for communicating and exchanging information, it can be a great gateway to business-sensitive information. Most companies do not have guidelines for email security, establishing control over neither sending and receiving nor analyzing email contentor attachments themselves.
Control over the use of the internet, as well as allowed websites and other services that depend on the internet are more easily controllable, and widely used. However, the same importance is not given to emails, which pose great threat to unauthorized information exposure. Therefore, when establishing your company’s information security policy, be sure to focus your efforts on ensuring the security of email services, a vital resource for the vast majority of businesses.
What about your company? Is corporate email service well controlled? Already know how to better protect your business information and data? Keep reading the blog post “Anti-spam: 8 benefits for corporate use“.
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