Your Email May Be Leaving Your Business Vulnerable – Here’s Why

Email is one of the most popular ways to communicate. It’s quick and inexpensive. However,businesses are exposed to the risk of criminal attacks.                                            

Malicious cyber criminals consider emails as businesses’ vulnerabilities: weaknesses in a computer system that hackers can exploit. This is like protecting your house with the latest alarm systems and then leaving the backdoor wide open.

If you’re wondering if you’re leaving your business vulnerable to cyberattacks through your email, read on as the best web hosting company shows how cyber criminals can attack you through your “back door”:

How Cyber Criminals Exploit Businesses Through Emails

Business Email Compromise

Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a form of corporate identity fraud. It occurs when a cybercriminal poses as a trusted contact in an email to fraudulently coerce money from their victims.

The money taken in a BEC attack is usually sent to accounts controlled by the criminals. Sometimes, cybercriminals also get their victims to engage in wire transfer requests to make the fraud even harder to trace.

The best way to defend yourself against BEC attacks is to keep your guard up. Be alert when receiving emails and ask yourself if the request being made by the email is really legitimate.

Malware Spread

Malware is a software program that is used to damage or disable computers, smartphones and tablets. Cyber criminals use malware to steal personal and business information.

There are many sneaky ways that cyber criminals use for spreading malware, one of which is through phishing emails.

A phishing email is an email that tries to trick you into installing malware onto your computer by pretending to be from a trustworthy source, such as a bank or IT company. If a phishing email reaches you, don’t click on any links contained in the email and don’t download any attachments. Simply delete the email, and then add the sender’s email address to your spam or junk email filter.

Denial of Service Attack

A Denial of Service (DoS) attack is when a cybercriminal uses malware to take down a website by flooding the site with traffic. 

This type of cyberattack can be done by a single computer or hundreds of computers, known as a botnet. Botnets can be programmed to generate traffic to websites that can crash their servers and take them down.

If you want to prevent a DoS attack on your website, you must employ a strong internet security solution.

Fake Site Emails

Fake website emails are emails that redirect you to a site that is identical to your bank’s or another company’s legitimate website. Once there, your personal and financial information is collected and then used for identity theft.

You can protect yourself against fake site emails by not clicking on any links in emails that you’re unsure about, even if the senders are legitimate contacts. Only visit the companies’ official websites and bookmark those official sites in your browser to make sure that you’re on the correct website.

Conclusion

These are just some of the malicious ways that cyber criminals can use to attack your company through emails.

To protect your business from cyberattacks, you should always be vigilant and keep your guard up when you’re communicating through emails. And if you ever have any doubts, don’t hesitate to contact the sender in a different way to confirm the legitimacy of their requests.

Your business is too important to become a victim of cyberattacks so make sure that you work with a web hosting company that can assure your security, especially that of your emails. 

IO Zoom is a reputable web hosting company based in Houston, Texas that offers a plethora of services including email security solutions. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business!