Every business or individual should know that while many tend to attach documents, photos, etc. to their email, it is important to understand that email is typically NOT secure. This poses a severe threat to your entire online identity: Should malicious attackers gain access to your email login, they can request a simple password reset for lots of services, thus, taking over your entire online identity.

When you transmit your email message to another person or persons, the details of your email are visible to anyone who is able to capture those packets sent between your workstation and the destination workstations. Most people's email inboxes include a wealth of identity attributes that could wreak havoc in the wrong hands.

Although email is not initially designed with any privacy or security in mind, there are ways—some easy, some more complicated— to keep your email secure from prying eyes. From lowest-tech to highest-tech, here are some ways to keep your email confidential.

Steps To Secure Your Email

• Choose a strong password. Longer is better; use a mix of letters, numbers, symbols, and punctuation marks.
• Choose a strong security question. Create the toughest question you can, or use false answers to the standard questions.
• Make sure you’re using a Secure Socket Layers (SSL)-enabled email client, or use a secure email service that offers OpenPGP encryption.
• Encrypt your email messages as well as your email server to keep messages unreadable by everyone except you and the recipient.

In addition to these steps, it is also best practice to educate your Stakeholders, employees, and business partners on the importance of refraining from sending confidential information via email. Have your company develop a secure pipeline of communication when sharing confidential information. Add monitoring to your company email system practices to ensure your company's confidential information is not sent via insecure email.

Tags : #CYBER SECURITY #EMAIL SECURITY