Hello Friends. Greetings of the
day.
Today, in this article, we will discuss
in detail about email security and email security standards.
Email security describes
different techniques for keeping sensitive information in email communication
and accounts secure against ransomware, unauthorized access, loss or compromise.
In order to protect email from
spammers and hackers, a number of email security standards and protocols have
been developed. These standards ensure that the mail that has been sent has
reached the receiver without losing its integrity. Email has always been the
weakest part of IT security. This is the way hackers tamper with your computer
or data.
It is estimated that 51% of global users have been impacted by ransomware
in the past 12 months, 31% have experienced data loss due to lack of cyber
resilience preparedness, 60% experienced an increase in impersonation fraud in
the last year, 82% have experienced downtime from an attack, 77% believe weak
passwords pose a risk of a serious security mistake, 58% saw phishing attacks
increase, and 60% of respondents' organizations were hit by an attack spread
from an infected user to other employees.
We are telling you few ways
through which you can protect your E-mail.
Use of cloud-based service
Companies offering email service
protect communication channels with the help of spam filters, firewalls and
detection engines. Those email flows control the flow of email to and from the
company's network. By routing the email from the gateway, you can start the
effective security of the email. The cloud platform keeps security patches up
to date.
Encrypt email from TLS
Since email is used for sensitive
business-related conversations, encrypting messages can help you avoid many
problems. You can use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt email on
platforms like Google G Suite and Microsoft 365. TLS provides the security
channel for communication and only those who send and receive it can read the
message.
Stay aware of imitators of hackers
Many times hackers perform
activities like stealing data or money by showing themselves like other email
users. Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4, a security training company, says,
"Sometimes the CEO is at his desk and employees receive an email message
asking them to transfer money." This is an example of spoofing email.
Configure email server
Sjouwerman says that one way to
configure email is to properly set up domain-based message authentication,
reporting and confirmation (DMARC). With this protocol you can be sure by
checking the validity of incoming email. This can help companies check email
validity, in which the sender sends a message after identifying someone.
Phishing training
Email training is an important
part of any company's cyber security strategy. It must be told that the
attachment should be opened only when you have asked someone to send it. While
this may sound like a common sense, information such as user credentials or
credit card numbers are easily accessible to hackers when caught in a phishing
attack. If attachment is not required with the email, then you confirm with the
sender whether they have sent it or not?
Implement SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
SPF acts as an email
authentication standard that help to protect senders and recipients from spam,
spoofing, and phishing. It sets a way to validate that an email was sent from
an authorized mail server and was designed to supplement the SMTP (Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol) protocol that’s used to send email because SMTP doesn’t
include any authentication mechanisms.
SPF also depends on the
well-established Domain Name System (DNS) that maps a web server name, such as
abracadab.com, to an IP (Internet Protocol) address usable by a computer. It
works like this:
A domain administrator publishes
a policy, called an SPF record that defines which mail servers are authorized
to send email from that domain. The SPF record is listed in the domain’s
overall DNS records.
When an inbound mail server
receives an email, it looks up the rules for the Return-Path domain in the DNS
records. The server then compares the IP address of the email sender with the
authorized mail servers defined by the SPF record.
The SPF record lists rules used
by the receiving email server to decide whether to accept, reject, or otherwise
flag the message.
SPF-working model |
Domain keys identified mail
It is a digital signature
approach, through which the reciever can check whether the mail that came from
the authorized domain or not. But it is also less useful because through this
we can whitelist and blacklist only domains.
S / MIME
S / MIME is its full name secure
/ multipurpose internet mail extensions. It is an end-to-end encryption
protocol. When we send an email, S / MIME encrypts our email. And only the
reciever can decrypt it.
S / MIME is implemented by your
email client but requires a digital certificate. Nowadays S / MIME is supported
by many modern email clients.
PGP / OpenPGP
The full name of PGP is pretty
good privacy, it is also an end-to-end encryption protocol. But its equivalent
OpenPGP is used more.
What OpenPGP is is an open-source
implementation of the PGP encryption protocol. It uses the public key
cryptography method to encrypt and decrypt email.
You can enter OpenPGP in your email
security setup by following applications.
Windows: Users of windows can use Gpg4win.
MacOS: users of macOS can use Gpgsuite.
Linux: linux users can use gnuPG.
Android: Users of Android can use openkeychain.
IOS users can use PGP everywhere.
Apart from the above mentioned
topics to provide email security, focus should also be given on email security
tools like a secure email gateway and email encryption solution.
An email encryption solution is
especially important for organizations required to follow compliance
regulations, like GDPR, HIPAA or SOX, or abide by security standards like
PCI-DSS.
These controls enable security
teams to have confidence that they can secure users from email threats and
maintain email communications in the event of an outage.
Request: Friends, this was the post of email security standards .I hope
this post will prove useful for you. Do share it with your friends .Thank you.