Why Email Security is More Important Than Ever

306.4 billion emails were sent per day in 2020. The number of daily emails is expected to reach 347.3 billion in 2023. Whichever way you look at it, that’s a lot of emails. Even with the growth of team chat tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, email is the tried and true communication option that’s open, permissionless, and works across all platforms. As organizations continue to work remotely and in hybrid environments, email has become a continuous security threat as well.

The ubiquity of email is easy to understand—it’s a simple and effective method of communicating everything from connecting with clients to communicating with colleagues about projects in motion. Email is the gateway to everything we do in business, and because of that, email security is more important than ever. If you have access to someone’s email account, you can reset any password, interact on their behalf, and generally ruin their life.

As digital transformation continues to evolve, companies must remain vigilant against cyber threats and phishing attacks. Phishing attacks doubled in 2020 from 2019, with no signs of slowing down.

How to Secure Your Email Account

Regardless of whether you’re an IT administrator for a small business or a Fortune 500 enterprise, you should be thinking about email security. It’s not always apparent how to ensure the security of your account while keeping ease of access in mind.

Fortunately, there are several measures you can take to keep your email account secure.

Strong and Unique Passwords

An easy to guess password like “Password1234” isn’t going to work for modern email security nor is reusing existing passwords across multiple services and accounts. Password breaches are bound to happen, and when they do, you’ll be glad your email account password isn’t the same as the one for your yoyocoupons.com account. Using apps like 1Password or LastPass, you can create unique passwords that are saved securely and can be accessed by all of your devices. If you want to get an idea of what a unique password looks like, check out this Password Generator. Just as an example: Dh63thma=4UE@pM) is a good password where snoopy1234 is not. Avoid using personally identifiable information in your password that can be discovered by someone else. Watch this short video to understand why.

Use Multi-factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication is one of the strongest security tools you have when looking to secure your email account. MFA for short requires you to provide additional verification factors in addition to your password, such as a PIN code sent to your phone, to gain access to an online account, decreasing the likelihood of a successful cyber attack. Apps like Google Authenticator generate a unique pin code every thirty seconds that must be entered when logging into new devices. Almost all email accounts today allow some sort of multi-factor authentication including Google Workspace, Gmail, Microsoft 365, and iCloud.

The benefit of MFA is even if someone guesses your password, they’ll still need to know your MFA code that changes every thirty seconds to access your account.

Use Secure Apps for Email Access

Finally, when choosing the best email app for Mac, Windows, Android, or iOS, consider who makes the app and their security policy. At Spike, we believe privacy and security are essential rights. That’s why we do everything to protect your data and create a workspace you can trust. Even on our free plan, Spike is ad-free and does not rent, sell, distribute or monetize on your data. All message data with Spike is encrypted using the AES-256 encryption.

While I am not going to go into depth about each email app’s security policies, the one thing I will add is to always consider the business model. If there is no way to pay for the service, the company is making money another way. At Spike, we have a free plan for personal accounts and then offer business plans. We make money the “old fashion” way by charging a fee for business customers. We make money by you using our service, not by looking at the contents of your email to target you with better ads.

Summary of Email Security

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, if someone has access to your email, they can largely disrupt your life – personal and professional. The ramifications and consequences of a security breach could be felt for years to come. Take time early in 2022 to make sure you have enabled multi-factor authentication and are using a strong and unique password with your personal and business email accounts.

Updated 1/14/2022