Email is a pillar of communication for modern businesses, permeating every aspect of daily life, including shopping, banking, customer service and more. But that simplicity and ubiquity are easily exploitable by cybercriminals intent on committing fraud and theft.
Online brand impersonation scams are on the rise, resulting in financial losses totaling billions of dollars each year. Equally damaging is the loss of trust and brand reputation that accompany these attacks.
The money and time companies invest to build brand recognition and position themselves as reputable can be whittled away one fraudulent act at a time — or destroyed in one large and publicized attack. The resulting damage can last for years and be difficult to repair. Unfortunately, almost half of all companies do not invest in brand protection or the secure email services that can stop brand impersonation before it starts.
Why do Businesses Need Brand Protection?
Online brand impersonation is a type of social engineering, a method of deception that capitalizes on human errors such as distraction to trick people into giving away personal information that is then used for criminal purposes.
Brand impersonation is often a precursor to business email compromise attacks, such as spoofing or phishing email campaigns that divert customers, employees and business partners from legitimate websites to fake sites where cybercriminals can steal data, money and information. In the process, they irreparably damage the brand reputation of the company they impersonate.
Most of the time, emails are just what they seem to be. Spoofing or phishing emails take advantage of the fact that even savvy email users expect most of the messages they see in their inbox to be legitimate.
Additionally, given the tools available to cybercriminals, it can be hard to tell if an email is real or fake. Not only are cybercriminals increasing in sophistication, but it is easier and cheaper than ever to find the tools to fake an email address so that it seems to come from a trusted source, register a domain that is almost identical to a reputable brand's or create a website that looks authentic.
How Does Email Security Protect a Brand?
Brand protection starts with email security precisely because email is so vulnerable. Additionally, email security begins before email ever lands in the user's inbox and eliminates human error as much as possible.
Email security encompasses a wide range of automated procedures that do not depend on human intervention to protect email and users against cybercriminals and their attacks. Email security protects against the spread of malware, spam and phishing attacks by identifying malicious emails and preventing their delivery to the intended recipient. Encryption protects the content of emails, making it impossible for anyone to view the contents but the sender and receiver. And email security can hide or identify malicious links, attachments and content if the email gets through to the user.
Many aspects of online brand protection are outside a company's control, such as cloned websites and spoofed domains, but email security is firmly within a company's control. It's the first line of defense in brand protection.
Contact: michael.bertini@iquanti.com
Press Release Service by Newswire.com
Original Source: Mimecast: Why Brand Protection Starts With Email Security
