How to Upgrade Your Defense Against Email-Based Cyberattacks

Email is a crucial communication tool in today’s digital world. A single organization sends and receives thousands of emails daily, making the email environment a massive vulnerability for enterprises and opening the door for cyberattacks. Recently, email-based cyberattacks have skyrocketed, with more and more businesses falling prey to the evasive techniques of hackers.

According to a Deloitte report, 91% of cybercrimes begin with a phishing email. Once a company falls victim to a phishing attack, recovering from the sudden jolt is often challenging since it can have widespread consequences. That’s why businesses should carefully consider their email security strategy and implement robust security measures for their email environment.

Solutions and technologies that can help keep email-based attacks at bay

While mindful measures help improve cyber hygiene, some sophisticated attacks still sneak past an organization’s cyber defences. Organizations can take their phishing defence to the next level with the following solutions:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI tools analyze emails in real-time and look for anomalies and warning signs throughout the email, from the metadata to the message content. Using machine-learning algorithms, AI-based systems recognize communication patterns and flag any unusual behaviour. While employees may fall for social engineering traps, these lures are highly ineffective against AI-based systems. AI-enhanced email security can detect and stop phishing messages before they reach employees.

Automation

Automation systems are a critical asset for cybersecurity teams. Automated email security solutions can reduce the time that technicians spend sorting through alerts or conducting routine maintenance, reducing stress on perpetually overloaded IT teams.

Security Awareness Training

No matter how secure an organization’s IT platform is, it is only as secure as its user base. In a survey, 45% of employees admitted to opening emails they considered to be suspicious, making them the biggest security liability to their organization. However, with security awareness training, employees can easily detect and report phishing emails and become cyber warriors for their organizations.

Security Operations Center (SOC)

With the increased sophistication and frequency of phishing attacks, organizations need 24/7 monitoring of their critical attack vectors. A security operations center (SOC) employs a team of experts who continually monitor an organization’s systems and networks using innovative tools to detect and eliminate an attack before it can harm the organization.

6 smart preventive measures to mitigate email-based cyberattack risk

Every business is inundated with email-based threats daily. Along with a security awareness training program to keep employees vigilant, following these tips can help everyone in an organization foster the kind of smart security culture that keeps businesses out of trouble.

1. Avoid clicking on untrustworthy links. Never click on unexpected or unusual links in an email message no matter who the sender is. Instead, hover over the link to see the underlying URL of the link to help you determine its legitimacy. Clicking on a malicious link often takes the victim to a malicious login page that bad actors use to steal the victim’s credentials. Sometimes, malicious links can also lead to malware downloads and other bad outcomes.
2. Never disclose sensitive information without verifying the request’s legitimacy. Do not reply to an email from an untrusted source requesting personal information, sensitive company data or money without verifying its validity, no matter how little information the sender asks for. A simple misjudgment could be enough to jeopardize the organization’s defences.
3. Don’t open suspicious email attachments. Always ensure that an email is trustworthy and check for red flags before opening an attachment. Opening an infected attachment can cause a cascade of bad effects, like the deployment of ransomware. Avoid opening unexpected attachments that prompt the recipient to run macros to view them. Enabling a malicious macro can give bad actors control of that computer.
4. Maintain a regular security awareness training program. Anyone in the company could be targeted in a phishing scam. To ensure that everyone is on their toes, conduct regular security awareness training for everyone from interns to the CEO. Include quizzes in the training so that you can easily determine who needs more help and who might be a security risk. Security awareness training reduces a company’s phishing risk from 60% to 10% within the first 12 months of a program.
5. Keep all systems up to date. An unpatched software program or operating system is most vulnerable to a cyberattack. Regularly update all programs and operating systems to benefit from the latest security patches.
6. Conduct phishing simulations. Train employees to spot and avoid phishing hazards with regular phishing simulations. Even better, customize the content of these simulations to reflect the unique threats that employees face daily. Microsoft analysts determined that when employees receive simulated phishing training, they’re 50% less likely to fall for phishing.

Source: ID Agent