Cybercrime and data theft are so common nowadays that every business person fears of becoming the next victim. It’s because you hear about so many thefts; you don’t know what and when it will affect your brand’s reputation.
Though you may spend money on cybersecurity, it’s not enough to combat this lurking menace. You must also allocate a percentage of your budget to work remotely with email security.
Email security is important because most of the breaches occur through your firm’s inefficient email security practices. Anyone who manages to penetrate your email system can easily steal passwords and other important information.
However, you can do your bit to ensure your email security by training your employees through the following work remotely tips.
Use strong, unique passwords.
Weak passwords will never be effective in protecting your business from possible data theft. Check the passwords your office uses and work to improve the weak ones. Use more of secure and unique passwords which hackers find challenging to guess and find out.
Your password should typically contain random numbers, lower and upper case letters, and special characters. Don’t use your business name, university, hometown, school, birthday or even the common letter-number combinations for your password. Besides, it’s better if passwords are more phrases than words.
Practice two-tier authentication
Two-tier authentication offers additional email protection. Your email cloud provider should have an option to add the service, and you can also download relevant software. You may always switch cloud email providers if your existing system does not support two-tier authentication.
Two-tier authentication is easy for you to use, but makes it difficult for hackers to access your emails. It’s because even if someone somehow guesses or retrieves your account passwords, they still need a second code to access your messages.
This code is delivered to you as an SMS in your phone, meant for your eyes only. Please don’t instruct to have the message sent to your computer, where there’s a high chance of the wrong eyes seeing it.
Beware of phishing emails.
If you don’t know, phishing is a concept hackers manage to steal the victim’s personal information by tricking them into handing over the details. They do it by first sending an email with a link.
You click the link to reach a simple, known website that resembles your bank website, but it’s not because it’s fake. It’s when you log into the account using your personal information that the phony website accesses and hands over your personal data to the hacker.
Anyone who falls prey to a phishing email data breach in a company can end up creating chaos. The consequences are worse if all employees use a common password.
Unfortunately, phishing attacks are no longer easily detected, which is why you need to observe the website’s minute details. It’s also better to use your gut instinct and common sense to decide which links are safe to click.
Always scan unexpected attachments before opening.
Your business may occasionally get phishing emails from unknown sources with files to open. You can’t identify them, and it’s not practical to delete all the messages you receive because some may be genuine.
You can instead invest in a system for email protection like an antivirus and anti-malware. Use it and advanced spam filters to scan all correspondences and decide if it’s safe to open any an attachment.
If the system indicates a problem, deleting the message, blocking the person who sent it, and securing your system helps prevent any possible damage.
Use company contact information only for company use.
Discourage your staff from utilizing your company communication systems and email addresses for personal work like talking to friends and online shopping.
Professional accounts are meant for work-related communication and nothing else. It helps limit the chances of hackers targeting and reaching your company email system.
Encourage your employees to instead use their smartphones and mobile internet for any personal work during working hours. However, don’t let them connect their smartphones with the office Wi-Fi system because it will only attract hackers.
Scan emails
Use your antivirus to also scan and validate incoming emails. The software alerts you if there’s anything worrisome so that you can quarantine the email and prevent possible damage.
Your business data is relatively safe now that you are armed with these six work remotely tips for email security. Just make sure your employees understand and follow your advice to ensure maximum security.
It also helps if you conduct regular meetings and training sessions to ensure everyone understands these work remotely tips for email security.
