Outbound Email Security Policy

Today, almost every organization in the Middle East uses emails as a primary means of communication. But the question arises! Is there an email security policy in your organization?

It is safe to say that the Middle East region has witnessed dramatic growth in almost every sector over the past decade. The best companies are going further and the emerging companies are growing fast. At present, hundreds of new companies are emerging every day in the region.

One among several other common things between the existing and emerging companies is to register a company domain and use a registered company email address. Since it looks more professional and legitimate.

However, as the numbers of companies increase the opportunity for cybercriminals has also grown up. If you ask how! Then the simple answer will be that they get more options to impersonate a brand and deceive the company’s customers and partners.

And from a company’s point of view, they will always want their recipients to receive only legitimate content sent from the company.

But cybercriminals are trying with all their possible techniques and technologies to stop that from happening. All they want is to let the recipients believe that their emails are legitimate.

In fact, as per Khaleej Times, 78% of businesses indicated that they had been impacted by ransomware in 2020. And more than half of the time this malicious malware is delivered through emails only. Moreover, a report from Zawya mentioned that over 10 million DDoS attacks were recorded globally in 2020, including a 183% increase in the UAE alone.

This is the reason why organizations should make sure that an outbound email security policy is in place.

Outbound Email Security Best Techniques

To ensure your recipients are protected from malicious emails while receiving emails from your email domain, there are three imperatives you should follow. The practices are mentioned below:

Strong Password Policy

Cybercriminals can exploit your business by stealing your login details. Therefore, an organization should enforce a strong password policy that involves creating a strong and unique password for each account. A strong password should consist of uppercase and lowercase letters along with numbers and symbols. 

It should always be a complex and hard-to-guess password but not something that is created using a pet name, birthday, or a name of a family member.  In addition, employees should adopt multi-factor authentication to make sure that an extra layer of security is implemented. So, even if hackers can guess their passwords, they still have to get past another layer of security.

Outbound Emails Policy

Although several organizations tend to be more concerned about an organization’s cyber security, they often overlook email security, specifically, outbound email security. So, it is time now for organizations to prioritize outbound email security to protect against cyber attacks, particularly those that are being delivered using email as a source

Cyber attacks such as  BEC attacks and ransomware attacks are among them. Therefore, an organization should ensure that an outbound email policy is developed, strictly followed, and maintained. Policies such as:

• Employees shouldn’t be allowed to use their official email accounts to send personal messages
• When employees leave the organization, their login credentials should be changed or deactivated
• Make sure employees are not noting their login credentials in some unsecured documents or sheet
• Make them aware that they should not write their password if someone is watching

Secure Your Email Domain

Last but not least is to secure your email domain. One of the many reasons why cybercriminals succeed in tricking your email recipients is because they use your name to lure them. They impersonate your brand and make them believe they are talking to you and not them. However, you can end this by implementing tools like TDMARC. It helps you in stopping those malicious emails impersonating your brand from reaching the recipient.

The tool gives total insights into your email channel. It helps you identify the source of those who are impersonating your email domain. Moreover, to stop email impersonation attacks, the tool helps in verifying the email authenticity protocols which are SPF check and DKIM check.

Implementing such a tool will help your organization keep up the brand image and protect your customers from falling for such cyber attacks.