How to protect Confidential Information in an Email?

Email precedence as a primary business and professional communication medium. Organizations not only interact with their customers via email but also use it to share confidential information such as financial reports, employee records, credit details, etc. As all the critical data is linked with the email box in one way or another, it is directly exposed to threats and can be the next target of cyber-attackers. To circumvent such a critical situation, protection of existing inbox email data and email data shared over the network should be made.

If you are unsure about how to protect confidential information in an email, read on as below is a brief guideline portraying the standard data protection procedures and secure email communication practices. 

Is Email a safe way of sending Confidential Information?

Just like an actual mail, an email travels to different locations before finally reaching its recipient’s inbox. So an infringement in any of the endpoints can cause data security concerns. There are many types of cyber-attacks through which email data can be breached such as Phishing/spoofing attack, Trojan attack, ransomware attack, DOS/DDOS attack, and more; thus, emails act as easy prey in the open world.

Protecting Confidential Information in an email:

In this modern age, the generation of new forms of cyber-attacks and security threats are common. As people mostly use their email account to link to any other website, most of the confidential information can be centralized in one place. Hence, there is a possibility of web attack hacking into an email account to gain access to all the confidential data and personal information.

To ensure the confidentiality of data in an email and to protect sensitive information in critical situations, we have listed the following key points to ponder. 

Ensure the Encryption of Email

Hackers are always on the verge of getting access to sensitive information shared on the web, so it should be preeminent for you to encrypt the confidential data shared via email. Email encryption to protect confidential data has proved to be very beneficial in different sectors where email is the primary source of sharing sensitive information. Encryption not only protects your data from cyber threats but also makes it unusable for others in case of unauthorized access. With that being said, you can link the most preferable encryption tool with your email and can convey the decryption password via another communication source to the recipient to get access to the shared information. 

Use Drive Links for Sensitive Information

It becomes vital to share confidential information such as bank account details, personal info, address, etc. via email in many scenarios. To ensure that the shared information is secure from unverified third party at a time like this, you can make use of the share feature for document or spreadsheet in Drive i.e. Google Drive, Dropbox, Mega, etc. Rather than going with the typical method of sending attachments, share the document with the specific person using his/her email address and instead, send the document link via email.

Blocking deceitful emails 

Protection from suspicious emails is as important as protecting email data in the first place. You can get IT support services to help you in this manner. As it is difficult to distinguish between authentic and fraudulent emails, you can mark the unverified email addresses as junk. By choosing appropriate email filtration settings to your inbox, all the suspicious social engineering phishing emails will automatically go to the spam box. This way of sectioning will place important emails fall in the right section and junk emails in the spam section; hence, cleaning out the deceitful stuff. 

Comprehensive Checking

If you want the recipient to protect your sensitive information in the email, you can add the word ‘Confidential’ in the email subject. In addition to this, make sure to cautiously read the email body and reconfirm the recipient’s email address before sending it. 

The security of confidential data is a worry for everyone out there. While there are many ways for hackers to gain access to your email data, following the above-mentioned simple tips and prevention measures can save you from serious trouble and damage. Having said that, the best course of action is to make these practices a regular activity in conducting communication.