How can I stop email fraud?  It is the question every company and their IT departments worldwide are frequently having to ask themselves. Email fraud is one of the most common, effective, and damaging types of cyberattacks that hackers use to break into accounts, steal data and scam your organization. The FBI reported that in 2020, business email scams cost Americans over $1.8 billion. 

If businesses don’t find a way to mitigate the risk of email fraud quickly, we could see ten to twelve figure losses in the not too distant future. That’s why we have created a guide to help you decrease the risk of email fraud in 2021 and beyond. But first, let’s explain why email fraud is on the rise.

Reasons for Email Fraud

Despite massive breakthroughs in information technology and computer science nearly a decade ago and their continued evolution, some businesses remain stagnant in implementing them into their everyday work, choosing rather old, paper-based manual processes and weak measures over more secure and efficient solutions. Fraudsters have recognized this, pouring all of their energy into taking advantage of this situation. Soon, email fraud will become so complex and so frequent that many fraudsters will automate their processes to streamline attacks and significantly increase their chances of a successful attempt. Nowadays, cyberattackers conduct extensive research on which companies still rely on outdated methods and build their strategy around their weaknesses.

Perhaps the most mind-boggling statistic is the number of businesses who, despite knowing that fraud is on the rise, choose not to have plans to combat the potential attacks. One of the significant factors contributing to the increase in fraudulent activity is the ease of infiltration from cyberattackers and the lack of security. 

Here are four ways how you can decrease email fraud:

Use Protected Emails with End-to-End Encryption

If you’re sending emails without encrypting, then you’re letting some third party read your private conversations. End-to-end encryption encrypts all data before it is sent to a server, utilizing an encryption key that the server doesn’t possess. Encryption protects your mails against data leaks when there is a server-level breach.

Educate Your Employees

Fraudsters create malicious emails and make them look harmless using various social engineering, URL spoofing, and phishing techniques. Such malicious emails come with infected links and attachments, which, when clicked or downloaded, can lead to serious security compromises. By educating your employees on how to recognize them, you can save your company from cyberattacks.

Secure the Implementation from the Start

When you have the best spam filtering algorithms, you can try and spot spam emails at the source level, way before they reach employees’ mailboxes. This initial filtering can save you from numerous attacks at the base itself.

Password Management

Suppose you mandate initial security requirements for the employee passwords, such as using special characters, upper- and lower-case letters, etc. In that case, you can ensure that all systems are secured with strong passwords. This way, you can reduce brute force cyberattacks.