Emails Security And Best Email Security Practices
Email is one of the most important thing in our digital life right now.It is has become an essential means of communication.According to spikenow, it is estimated that over 280 billion emails were sent and received daily in 2018.
Our emails are linked to our bank accounts,social media, and whole lot of others.There is hardly anything you do online that doesn’t require you to use an email address.
With the high increase in the use of emails,cyber criminals leverages on this to carry out different forms of cyber attacks and to this regards,the security of our emails has become very important.
Importance of Email Security
Email Security has become very important as a lot of attacks has been carried out via emails.This attacks ranges from Phishing attacks to account hijacking.
According to a statistics,71% of cyber attacks begins with phishing emails.This attacks do not just affect businesses or organizations.It affects individuals as the damage may range from financial loss to information compromise.
Basic Tips For Email Security
- Change your password regularly: Changing of passwords is a good precautionary method when it comes to security.If an attacker gets access to your password, changing it removes that access.It also limit the damage the attacker would have done.
- Use strong password: A strong password is a combination of lower/upper case letters,numbers,symbols and not less than 8 characters.Your password should not be a dictionary word(words that can be found on the dictionary).
- Use different emails for different purpose: There is hardly any online activity that doesn’t require you to register with an email. This doesn’t mean you should open an email account for all online activities.Online activities should be categorized and email addresses should be used accordingly.For example,the email address associated with any financial details should not be used for social media accounts.Have a designated email for some not so important sites and purposes
- Be wary of links: Links can get you into trouble.It might take you to a website that infects your system with malware like virus,ransomware(kidnapping of your system),key loggers(captures everything you type on your computer like passwords,card details).Email links can also trick you into giving out sensitive information(phishing links).Do not click on links sent by a bank requesting you to carry out any action,do not click on links sent by friend that you weren’t expecting because email addresses can be spoofed(mimicked)
- Keep your email applications Updated: A lot of users use email applications for mobiles and it should be noted that updates are released for a reason (to improve user experience or to patch weakness that can be exploited.).Be sure to keep up with this updates and act accordingly.
- Check your email accounts activity:Your email account activity gives you details of devices that has access to your account,sign in records,access type and some other information.Reviewing them regularly is very important and it can reveal any suspicious device that has logged in to your emails.Be sure to delete any unknown device from an unknown location and change your password immediately
- Activate two factor authentication(2FA): 2FA provides extra layer of security,it means you do not use only password and email id to login to your account.You need something else and this could be a one time password sent to your mobile or a code generated whenever you want to login.Check for the two factor authentication setting on your email accounts and be sure to activate it
- Keep your email ID and password confidential: Your email ID and password is confidential,it is for you alone.Do not share with a second party.
