Communicating with your clients and business partners is among the crucial elements of business operations. Of course, you will not achieve much if your communication lines are broken. Thanks to the Internet, it is not as difficult to keep in touch with clients and advertise your products. One of the leading platforms for communication and advertising is email. Unfortunately, this platform is also one of the most vulnerable to modern cyberattacks.
Local managed IT service companies in Phoenix and other cities will now focus on security protocols for your emails. The protocols are structures designed for the protection of your emails from third-party interference. Your SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) has no embedded security and is vulnerable to all manner of malware that hackers might send to your company in the forms of attachments on seemingly genuine emails.
Here are your email security protocol alternatives:
TLS and SSL
Transport layer security (TLS) is the successor of the secure sockets layer (SSL) that was depreciated in 2015. These are application-layer protocols that will standardize communication for end-users. In email security, the security protocols provide a security framework that works in conjunction with the SMTP to secure emails. TLS works by initiating a series of ‘’handshakes’’ with your email server when you receive an email. These are steps the server takes to validate the email’s encryption settings and validate its security before the transmission of the email. TLS, therefore, generates base-level email encryption for your network.
Digital Certificates
These are encryption tools used to secure your emails cryptographically. The certificates allow you to send encrypted emails on a predefined encryption key while encrypting your outgoing mails. You, after all, would not want to be known as the company that sends malware to clients and partners. The public key for your digital certificate is available for those who want to send you encrypted emails while you will decrypt your received emails using a private key.
The SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
This is an authentication protocol specifically designed for the protection of your network against domain spoofing. SPF introduces extra security checks into your email server that will determine whether your incoming messages came from a specified domain or if a person is masking their identity using the domain. The domain, in this case, is a section of the Internet under one name. Most hackers will often hide their domains to avoid being blacklisted or traced when spoofing a malicious mail as a healthy domain.
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)
DKIM denotes an anti-tamper procedure, which ensures that your sent emails remain intact before reaching the recipient. It employs digital signatures to verify that emails have been submitted by a particular domain and checks that the domain is authorized to send the email. To this end, DKIM is considered an extension of SPF. It also eases the process of developing domain whitelists and blacklists.
Hackers are all more focused on your email security vulnerabilities nowadays. They know that opening emails is a crucial undertaking in your business since you cannot afford to ignore messages. The above security protocols will give you a guarantee that none of your emails will open you up to cyberattacks.
