No wonder emailing has replaced traditional forms of messaging. With lots of
advantages, it has brought some challenges also. Over the period of time, email applications have
evolved and become much more robust for security. At the same time though, email attacks have also
evolved to bring new challenges for businesses dealing with sensitive emails. The
primary aim of these attacks is to breach data, cause financial losses, malware
infections, and other forms of cyber harm. Today, email spoofing is one of the
biggest challenges for companies and email client developers. Therefore,
businesses are demanding advanced email spoofing support.
Benchmark IT Services (BITS) is the solution provider to deal with the issue of email security. The
company works closely with Acronis Cyber Protect (a leading name in cyber
protection) & AVAST security to help you get optimum control of email servers and deny any DNS/email spoofing attacks.
Let’s understand the problem in detail now.
Email security solution by Benchmark IT Services
Email Spoofing Vs Phishing
Before discussing the solutions BITS provides for robust email security, it is essential
to differentiate between email spoofing and phishing. Many people consider them the
same thing. However, they are different from each other.
Email spoofing is a specific technique to manipulate the sender's identity in an email
whereas phishing is a broader category of attacks that involve using deceptive
emails to manipulate recipients into taking certain actions that benefit the attacker.
However, both of them are serious cybersecurity threats that need continuous
vigilance and appropriate protective measures.
Email spoofing allows attackers to manipulate the sender’s email address in such a
way that the email appears authentic. The email spoofing goal is to deceive the
recipient into believing that the email is from someone they know or trust. Here, the
email header information is changed, including the quote to win the reliance of the
receivers.
If you ask how common is email spoofing? You may shock to learn that a staggering 1.3 billion spoofed emails generate and send every day. Banks, MNCs, financial
institutions, and government bodies are always the top target. Even small
organizations receive such emails day to day.
Protection against Email Spoofing:
BITS has joined hands with Acronis Cyber Protect to address email spoofing
attacks. It works on the following fronts:
Advanced Email Filtration & Authentication
It is working on advanced email filtering mechanisms to detect and filter out
malicious or suspicious emails. Techniques such as Sender Policy Framework
(SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message
Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) are greatly used to identify
incoming emails.
Malware Detection
Analysing email text and its attachments to detect malware, ransomware, and other
malicious payloads are essential. They can be embedded with spoofed emails. By
using advanced threat detection mechanisms, it ensures to locate and quarantine
such threats.
Creating Awareness
BITS can organize meetings with your workers to educate them about spoofing and
how to respond to such emails. It substantially reduces the rate of spoofing.
Real-Time Monitoring
BITS can back you with its round-the-clock service because real-time monitoring is
effective to identify the signs of suspicious emails and keep the admin alert against
them.
Data Protection and Backup
Along with data protection, a data backup facility can prevent your precious data if
you accidentally click the spoofed email. Regular backups, offsite storage,
redundancy, versioning, and disaster recovery are some supportive measures you
can expect to get under the backup support.
If you want to learn more about protection against email spoofing or are interested in
getting support, you can connect with Benchmark IT Services (BITS).
Email Phishing is a practice that hackers use to deceive the users by making their fraudulent communication appear as authentic. To understand Email Phishing better, let’s understand how such attacks take place. Phishing attacks happen when we receive an unknown email that looks from a known source and has some sort of attachment or a link. If we try to download the attachment or click the link, it might allow the attacker to steal confidential information and obtain control over the system.
phishing emails
The above images are examples of phishing emails. If we select the “Secure your account” option or click the link, we might fall victim to phishing attacks.
How can we prevent Phishing?
Training and education for the staff: We need to train the staff about spam emails. Need to show them some spam emails received previously and make them cautious. This helps organisations a lot in preventing phishing attacks.
Let them know the most common ways to identify if it is a suspicious email, such as:
Urgent call to action.
Unknown, first time or unusual sender.
The domain of the email doesn’t match the organisation.
Suspicious links or attachments.
Secure accounts and access: Encourage employees to use strong passwords and keep changing them regularly. Should also recommend they use multi-factor authentication to secure the device and data.
If an employee receives a suspicious email, then:
Report it, and the cybersecurity department will take care of the issue.
Try to do a hard delete of the email.
Try blocking the sender so you won’t receive any further emails from the same sender.
Try not to click on any suspicious links.
Phishing emails
Installing Security software: This is often considered the first line of defence because, if we have security software, it might block the phishing email from being delivered.
Keeping the software updated
Enforcing password policies: This includes setting up some rules while creating a password, such as the minimum length of the password, the special characters they can use, etc., to make it complex.
Allowing the use of multi-factor authentication.
How to check the email header for phishing emails?
Every email has three components: envelope, header, and message. The envelope is not always visible; the news is where we put the actual message. The title is visible to the sender and the recipient.
The header contains the sender, receiver, date, and subject details. It also shows us the security checks it has passed before the receiver has gotten the email.
To know if it is a phishing email or not, we can check if:
The sender address and domain match or not: if it doesn’t match them, it is a phishing email.
In both personal and professional life, there are many different “backups” that can bail you out of trouble.
Some great examples are the spare tyre in your trunk or the spare batteries in the bottom draw. It’s crucial to ensure that your anchors have redundancies, if one part comes to nought the other parts will secure you.
With data, backup can guarantee the survival of your business. Now, let us list the top five reasons why businesses must have a suitable data backup solution in 2020.
Data Backup and Recovery
#1 – Effortless Recovery
No one is perfect.
Some people will make mistakes occasionally, others quite often. Virus-infected emails are opened each day and crucial information is often deleted by mistake. These failings should not trouble you if you keep a backup of your system.
With backed up data, it is easy to restore the latest backup of your system before the virus infection occurred. Also, you can recover a document from a prior time to when it was deleted.
Remember, it is straightforward to guard against minor problems while still having the advantage of being ready for major issues.
But without backup, minor issues became major headaches.
#2 – Audits, Taxes, and Archives
A lot of organisations are required to maintain their organisational records for lengthy periods by various regulations or for tax reasons.
This makes it easy to go back a few years and refresh your memory if necessary, explains the tax experts at Robinson Accounting. They explain “it can be reckless to place all the faith in your computers and assume they are sufficient as they have kept data from the past few years. In many cases, maintaining one single copy of your information is playing with fire. The peace of mind of knowing you are tax compliant is truly priceless.”
Ensuring that you backup critical business information at an offsite location can save you a lot if something happens to the local data. Remember, regulatory and tax authorities will not listen to your claims of a data disaster. To them this is an excuse, they will deem you non-compliant and you may be forced to pay costly fines.
#3 – Competitive Edge
Backups can lead to businesses establishing an advantage over their competition.
In case an unforeseen disaster happens, the first business to restart its operations will attract the customers of those businesses that have not yet resumed operations. Failure to have a plan means that your business is doomed.
Proper planning guarantees that your business will continue running and be open to customers from firms that were closed by the data disaster.
A majority of these businesses end up shutting their operations completely within a two-year time frame from their data calamity. Moreover, major data loss situations aren’t always the cause of a disaster.
Human actions can wreck a business by overlooking important procedures or committing silly mistakes. Mother nature is not responsible for all data mishaps.
Ensuring that you frequently back up your data and implementing a robust backup and disaster recovery strategy can minimise the risk of these threats. Your business can be one of the few that emerges from a data disaster unscathed.
#5 – Doing Work Twice
‘Do it right the first time’ is the primary rule of work.
If you experience a minor data issue and you lack backups, you may get back certain information but you are not certain of the precise data you recover. In any case, you’ll be overwhelmed by the work that will have to be done to restore system settings, recreate documents and spreadsheets that have been worked on for months by employees or you.
Anxiety counsellor Glen Munt notes that this can have a flow on effect on mental health. He explains “doing the same work twice isn’t just a hit to your productivity, it can also generate feelings of anxiety and reduce confidence. This can create spirals where work continues to suffer, even after the work has been completed.”
To make matters worse, a large data loss can necessitate designing and creating all the business systems, documents and data from scratch which is an insurmountable challenge for many companies.
In the digital era, businesses are rapidly shifting to cloud environments to enhance scalability, efficiency, and collaboration. However, this shift brings new ch...
The retail industry is transforming rapidly as digital technology becomes central to business success. Smart retail, driven by the Internet of Things (IoT), is re...
Our Esteemed Partner
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
