Securing E-mail – The Best Ways to Lower Your Risks

By Gregg Larson

RISMEDIA, June 20, 2008-E-mail is one of the most dangerous activities any of us does online. It’s easy for e-mail account access to be compromised and for sensitive information to get into the wrong hands. What can be done to lower these risks?

First, find out-by looking at your e-mail settings or talking to your network staff or ISP-if you are using an unencrypted protocol (POP or IMAP) to get your e-mail. If so, then your login information can be captured and your e-mail can be intercepted.

If you are using a public network, you can encrypt all your network traffic by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). If your company has a firewall that includes VPN capabilities and you connect to it before checking your e-mail, then the traffic can’t be “sniffed” as easily.

You can also encrypt your e-mail and attachments in other ways. While this doesn’t stop people from “sniffing” an insecure e-mail protocol, it can stop people from reading e-mail and opening attachments that are sent to them by accident.

The next tool in your security arsenal is to use company policy to educate employees on safer e-mail behaviors. The policy can include instructions not to use e-mail to distribute offensive materials, not to send or forward SPAM, not to send confidential information via e-mail and when to use encryption, and not to open attachments from untrusted sources-or even from trusted sources without phone verification.

None of the above steps address SPAM and the tremendous threat of malicious software that can be attached to e-mail. At a time when spammers are becoming ever more sophisticated at evading anti-spam tools, making the right technology choices is more important than ever.

Gregg Larson is the CEO of Clareity Security.

For more information, please visit www.ClareitySecurity.com.

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