Defending Against Email Security Threats

Email security threats put every business in danger. All companies are required to keep Personally Identifiable Information (PII) secure, and health care companies are also required to keep health-related information, called Protected Health Information (PHI) secure, too. Huge fines and possible criminal penalties face companies and their executives if that data is lost, breached or stolen. Now consider how much of that same kind of “protected” information is transferred freely within insecure emails in your own business and between your organization and other third parties, and you can begin to understand the email security threats that put your business in danger.

Email Security Threats and The Rise of Healthcare Data Breaches

Among all business resources, emails are a top method of breaching a company’s network, usually by stealing access to critical resources through phishing, or outright stealing of data through Ransomware.

Does your organization do business with any healthcare clients or organizations? If you do, then your organization is a “Business Associate” according to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which seeks to keep Protected Health Information (PHI) secure. Business Associates are required to follow HIPAA standards and keep PHI secure, just like the healthcare organizations that it supports.

Allowing PHI to be shared with unauthorized parties is a serious breach, which could cost the Business Associates millions of dollars, and result in the incident being posted on the “Wall of Shame”, which is a website run by the Office for Civil Rights of the HHS that lists data breaches that affect 500 or more individuals.

HealthCareInfoSecurity.com recently published an article about the rise of healthcare data breaches among Business Associates. According to the article, “3,273 breaches impacting more than 234.5 million individuals have been posted to the HHS website since September 2009. So far in 2020, 208 major breaches affecting nearly 4.7 million individual have been added”

In other words, this is not a small problem.

But the article goes on to say that “Unfortunately, after email accounts have been compromised, many organizations realize that their ability to audit email is limited, he notes.”

Email security threats are problems that Digital Uppercut has found a way to fix.

Phishing and Malware: Two Huge Email Security Threats

Phishing is an attack on a person or organization that includes an email message sent to a user that attempts to get the user to reveal login credentials to important resources, usually by disguising the originator of the email. For example, a phishing email might appear to be sent from a bank, asking you to login and reset your password. Doing so would capture the entered login credentials, and then immediately use those credentials to steal the resource.

Malware is software designed to harm your network and your business, and to often steal the resources it finds there. For example, Ransomware is a type of malware that can encrypt your company’s data and force you to pay a ransom for a decryption key. If you don’t pay the ransom, your business may be destroyed. Making Ransomware worse is when the malware “exfiltrates” your data -- often sending it halfway around the world -- so that it can be auctioned off or sold to other cyber criminals on the dark web.

Phishing, Ransomware and other types of Malware are serious email security threats for any modern business, and ones that every company should devote time, energy and money to preventing.

At the same time, Email is increasingly moving into the cloud, into such platforms as Google’s Gsuite or Microsoft’s Office 365. But protecting your cloud-based email systems can be very, very difficult. Both Google and Microsoft have their own basic and “Advanced” threat protection systems, but each company does a poor job of actually protecting your data. According to some reports, as much as 25% of all phishing attacks make it through to the mailbox when protected by their default security tools.

If these built-in security tools have any benefit at all, it’s to block a limited amount of Phishing and Malware attacks. The worst part about them is that they give the organization a false sense of security. And if/when you are breached, they only give you tools that allow you to view what happened in a very limited (and foggy) rear view mirror. The article at HealthCareInfoSecurity.com mentioned that "...organizations may be able to determine when a user logged into email, read or sent an email. But the audit logs may not record what previously emails were reviewed."

How To Protect Your Cloud-Based Email from Email Security Threats

Some companies seek to increase security with an email gateway. But those devices sit outside your cloud-based email and can only see inbound emails. As a result, they cannot see the internal emails and files shared within your organization, or detect failed login attempts common with attempted hacks or insider threats.

That is why Digital Uppercut has worked hard in the fight against email security threats, and can now provide our clients with cloud-based email protection tools that provide a higher level of security, insight and protection than anything else ever developed. Our tools give you a clear picture of where your threats are coming from, whether that’s outside of your company or from inside.

We can protect your email and cloud services with tools from over 60 world-class security vendors, all working simultaneously to protect your organization. Why 60? Why not one or two or even 10? It’s been proven that no single security tool can protect every target from every attack. But stacking tools in each category, including anti-virus, sandboxing tools, predictive malware protection, or anti-phishing tools, has a much greater chance of protecting your business. And that’s what our system can do for your organization.

And not only will you be protected from email security threats better than ever before, but you will be able to see how well you are protected because our system includes a powerful dashboard that shows you every blocked threat and attempted attack, how it was handled, and the potential threat it posed to you.

We can even go beyond email, because our tools also connect to, and monitor, your cloud-based storage and sharing systems, like OneDrive, SharePoint, Box, Dropbox and Google Drive, too.

Protect Your Business Today

Think for a moment about the critical data stored on your network and passing through your email. Imagine what would happen if an email security threat were successful and data were stolen, breached or encrypted by Ransomware. Are you prepared to pay hundreds of thousands to get your business back? Would your company go out of business if all your data were lost? Then pick up the phone to call us at 818-913-1335 or contact us online and ask for a demonstration of our Email Protection Toolkit, and find out how easy it can be to protect your company from cyber security attacks.