By adopting these security measures, companies would provide added peace of mind to their customers that emails they receive from the organisation are authentic:
Securing company templates
Looking beyond email signatures, companies need to put measures in place to secure company documents and templates from third parties. This includes removing former employees from systems and limiting the access vendors and other external parties have to company documents. For example, if important documents such as company letterheads are easily accessed via an unsecure platform, anyone could use the document to spoof recipients into providing valuable personal data or releasing funds.
For added security, company documents and templates should be housed centrally on a cloud platform that restricts usage to only those departments and individuals that need access to these documents. In addition employees should not be able to save company documents to their desktops for future use as these can be easily tampered with or shared with employees that do not need access to them. Companies should incorporate a tracking system that provides line of site of who is accessing documents and when, as well as providing executives with statistics of user template compliance at any point in time.
This is supported by Varonis which states that fewer people should be able to access to sensitive company information as some of the biggest data breaches in the past year stem from a user who had access to files they shouldn’t have been able to see in the first place. They found that, on average, only 3% of company folders are secured leaving employees open access to the majority of company documents and customer information.
Protection from the inside out
In many instances, companies have invested significantly into improving IT security with firewalls and antivirus and antimalware software, however, internal security measures have fallen through the cracks.
In some instances companies rely on third party organisations for email branding to be applied in the form of banners and email signatures which are applied after the email has been sent from the sender. By intercepting these emails, the emails are effectively tampered with and could put customer data at risk. It also poses questions about email authenticity which is key to establishing trust with customers.
Identity theft can occur by neglecting to cancel former employee access to documents. When employees leave an organisation, their access to company documents and systems should be removed from the system immediately and any storage of documentation on the workstation should immediately be flushed. According to Varonis 34% of company user accounts are stale but enabled and 64% of user accounts are stale or inactive. This opens up additional opportunities for identity theft and gives hackers access to useful information that could go easily unnoticed for an extended period of time.
As stated by Varonis, “if you’ve got outdated users with active accounts, it’s like handing over a new set of papers to your hacker.”
Giving employees’ access to locked content that cannot be tampered with, provides additional security for customers. This practice reduces the risk of employees and third parties from altering the content and minimises the possibility of intentional and unintentional sabotage from employees. It also adds a layer of authenticity to the email, giving recipients added peace of mind that the content is authentic.
Read more about putting the basic in place to protect customer and company data.
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