How to Protect your Company’s Most Valuable Data
Your company’s most valuable data likely isn’t what you think: despite the prevalence of file databases, cloud storage, and CRM systems, your company’s most valuable data source can be accessed by every single employee’s computer, phone, or personal laptop: emails.
On average, up to 75% of a company’s intellectual property resides in email and other messaging applications. This is because almost everyone uses email. Email offers users the ability to communicate important information with colleagues, clients, and supervisors, but also carries the highest risk, when it comes to losing business data to breaches.
General Email IT Need-to- Knows
Despite how often email data breaches occur, they are hard to see coming.
Last year over 30,000 organizations in the United States — including small businesses, towns, and local governments were hacked in a matter of days. Some basic levels of protection against these cyber attacks include setting complex passwords, using double authentication (text or code generator), and third-party device verification.
More advanced hackers can still get around these safeguards, which is why it pays to hire an IT partner that can review advanced security settings and create a cybersecurity plan for your business. An expert can also make sure that every email device is equipped with anti-virus and anti-malware precautions that can go a long way in preventing a high-cost email data breach.
Cloud Email Protection
For most businesses, email is used to communicate with customers, suppliers, and all branches of the organization. Most of these emails are stored on something called a cloud server, which is most often targeted by malware attacks. In 2021, cloud malware attacks grew by 134%.
One of the most effective ways to protect the “cloud” in which these emails are stored is with an email gateway.
An email gateway is a type of email server that protects an organization’s or user’s internal email servers. Email gateways work by detecting different forms of malware including:
- Spam
- Phishing Attacks
- Fraudulent Content
These gateways can also encrypt data, so it’s only able to be read by authorized users in your organization. This is especially important when handling customer data or sensitive business documents.
Protecting Email for Mobile
Unsurprisingly, emailing from smartphones is growing more popular due to increased mobile phone usage and work-from-home workplaces. In fact, being able to answer emails on the go is one of the greatest IT assets for working professionals today.
However, mobile email carries a large risk of human error when it comes to protecting company data. The average small business owner loses $188,000 in a security attack, so these days, employees need to be trained in mobile email security.
To avoid falling into the majority (64%) of businesses that experience financial loss due to email breaches, employees should know how to identify and report phishing scams, unauthorized files, and suspicious emails.
It’s also important to make sure that your company has ensured that employees cannot use their work computer to respond to personal emails, all sensitive messages are encrypted, and that devices are regularly subject to antivirus screenings. An IT partner can easily check for compliance and conduct these training sessions.
Get Help Protecting Your Most Valuable Asset
Prospera IT provides turnkey IT solutions that handle everything from providing industry-leading network protection to targeted cybersecurity and compliance solutions.
We want to be your trusted technology partner. Contact us today and let’s get started!