Email has become the primary language of business. However, it's also become the primary means of cyberattacks against businesses. As more sensitive financial, personal and medical information is sent via email every day, keeping a secure system in place is key to avoiding cybercrime in the office and at home.
End-to-end encryption has been hailed as a high level of email security. But encrypted email alone has limits in terms of how much it can protect businesses. Instead, businesses need to explore a variety of cutting-edge protections if they want to stay at the forefront of cybersecurity.
The limits of encryption in email
End-to-end encryption ensures that only the person who sends the message and its intended recipient are able to read it. This helps protect any individual email from being read by any third parties who may be interested.
Why doesn't everyone use encrypted email? There are certain aspects to email specifically that makes end-to-end encryption challenging. Many email providers use some level of encryption, but only when the same provider is both the sender and the receiver. For example, two Gmail users emailing back and forth will have built-in encryption. But if they email someone using Outlook, that email will exist in plain text.
Relying on manual encryption would be an extremely high bar for a business to expect clients to agree on, and indeed, even expecting clients to use an encrypted portal or specific email provider is quite a big ask that may cost leads, depending on your industry.
That's why while encryption is a great tool to have, it doesn't tell the complete story.
Does encryption prevent the most common forms of cybercrime?
The majority of cybercrime is done through email, and end-to-end encryption can certainly prevent certain types of attacks.
However, many attacks are done using much more old-fashioned tools known as social engineering. Bad actors will send emails that appear to be from a colleague or related to some other real part of the victim's life, such as a recent purchase. Then they may either gather information through a phishing scam or directly send malware as an attachment or link.
In these cases, hackers aren't surreptitiously uncovering people's private information — instead, they're often being directly told. That's why encryption alone can't prevent some of the cyberattacks that businesses need to watch out for.
Next steps in email cybersecurity
Cybersecurity experts remain one step ahead of cyberattacks on these fronts, but it's important to stay up to date on the latest developments. Top email security now will include many features beyond email encryption. Some features to look for are:
- URLs inspected not only during initial delivery, but on every click
- Emailed links are initially opened into an isolated cloud browser
- Automatic blocking of spoofed emails (emails designed to look like they come from a colleague)
- Inspection and sandboxing of attachments
- Robust employee security training
These features demonstrate how far modern email security has expanded beyond even good encryption. It's now possible to prevent many different kinds of common email cyberattacks before they become a serious problem for your business.
Press Release Service by Newswire.com
Original Source: Is Encryption Enough to Protect Business Email?
