What is Email Security?

Did you know that emails can be intercepted and the contents manipulated, modified and forwarded back to the intended recipient without you even knowing about it? Sounds frightening, doesn't it?

Your recipient would not even know that this has happened and would not question the apparently odd request to pay the invoice into a different bank account from usual because even the attached invoice was over-written with the new bank details.

The first anybody would know of such an incident is when the original supplier is chasing the invoice (that the customer thinks they have paid). This is the first time the tampering of said email will be discovered!

In 2022, the estimated loss per business was on average, £4,200 and a total UK loss, estimated at £27 Billion. Even worse, it is estimated, to remedy a breach/cyberattack of this nature costs around £21,000.

It's not just the financial loss to both parties (the supplier and customer) that is in question, but also reputational damage to the party whose emails have been compromised can be at stake.

"Customers receiving an invoice should be wary of requests to pay into alternative bank accounts!"

Let me tell you straight, email was never designed to send sensitive information around the globe and this practice needs more thought and carefulness before sending attachments containing information that is intended for one pair of eyes only.

It's all very well and good adding disclaimers and relying on people's goodwill to delete emails if they are not the intended party, but human nature does kick in so having a 'sneak peek' will always happen.

A simple error in sending new terms to the wrong 'John Smith' can have wide-ranging repercussions and could lead to a customer boycotting you as a supplier if the subject is around better pricing for a different customer.

Spam/junk /phishing emails can be reduced by implementing Email Security software such as Worry-Free security suite. All emails coming into the business are first delivered to external servers that scan the contents and any attachments before forwarding them to the intended party. Any emails not delivered are quarantined.

"A report is sent out once a day for your admin to release or delete the email manually!"

To protect your brand when sending emails, there are services available to protect the authenticity of your domain name contained within the email address to reassure the receiver that the email is from a genuine source.

Don't be left with egg on your face; get proper email security and be as careful as possible.

If you feel inspired to find out more then do call me on 07555 807700 or leave a comment below and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.