Cyberthreats and crimes are evolving at a shocking rate. Every month there is a shocking data leak or identity theft story. Hacking methods have become more sophisticated leading to the increase in email security breaches and the frequency of their occurrence increases dramatically with each passing year. After the initial shock, it became clear that the violation was caused, in part, by bad data security practices: the target, Verification.io’s email marketing service, was found to store customer information in unsafe public information.
This rise, understandably, has put many people on the brink. Sites such as Have I Been Pwned, founded by web security expert Troy Hunt, have come out in response to public opinion, and private individuals have begun looking for secure email providers to keep their communications secure. But it is not enough for private individuals to keep a close eye on their emails. Businesses need to do everything in their power to protect their customers’ data if they want to avoid becoming the subject of subsequent major email security violations.
Exploring Different Types of Threats
There are five main types of email security violations that businesses should be aware of:
- Spam: While it may seem harmless – more annoying than real threats – when left in the wrong hands, spam poses a serious threat to data security. Just ask anyone affected by the 2017 violation; caused by an unplanned report that left spam servers open to attack, resulting in the leak of more than 700 million email addresses. While the consequences of some unintentional infringement are minimal due to the many false and duplicate email addresses contained in the data set, spam-related attacks can be extremely damaging. Email blasting, a growing form of spam, proves to be particularly dangerous because it treats spam emails like a Trojan horse. With email bombings, the target is full of messages, most of which confirm emails. Once the giant has the victim’s email address, they will use the victim’s signature script on as many unprotected sites as possible, thus leaving them at risk. As their inbox overflows, the victim is less likely to notice unusual alerts or malicious behavior, allowing the criminal to access the victim’s accounts and act unavailable.
- Identity Theft: Crime Theft refers to any attack on which a criminal uses electronic media – usually, email – to impersonate a person. The idea here is that the recipient, seeing that the message comes from a reputable source, will be more likely to provide confidential information, such as logging in to their account, when requested or unlocking unprotected attachments, thus exposing themselves to the virus.
- Viruses: A virus is a type of computer program designed to infiltrate and inflict damage on existing programs by adding its own malicious code called payload. Viruses are often associated with spam attacks and the theft of sensitive information, using email as a hotspot that can gain access to individuals or organizations. Once the virus has successfully accessed the system, it will release its load; depending on the type of virus, it can erase the organization’s hard drive, insert files, steal passwords, or run a system completely. Viruses are under a larger category of software that is deliberately designed to create malware known as malware.
- Ransomware: Ransomware is another common form of malware. It is used to encrypt victim files; the data stolen is then successfully captured by the criminal until the victim pays his or her ransom, usually in the form of bitcoin. Ransomware is one of the most popular kinds of cyber attacks. There have been more than 204 million attacks in 2018.
- Internal Threats: Depending on the role they play in the company, some employees have unlimited access to sensitive information – and all you need is one employee who is unhappy with the organization to find themselves in the middle of a data breach. More than 50% of IT leaders believe that employees put company information at risk in the last 12 months, while others believe that employees risk data leak.
