Often, businesses gather customer information and exchange emails with private information with customers, including details such as names, addresses, phone numbers, bank account details, and credit card numbers.
The problem is that many companies conduct business through unsecured email.
What does this mean to you?
It means that when you email a company, you’re putting your data at risk.
If you use an unsecured email account, those emails can be accessed by other people. Whether they are hackers or foreign government agents, they could intercept the messages and gain access to sensitive information.
- They can steal your personal and financial data. Big problem!
- Also, the stolen data can be used by criminals for online purchasing or total identity theft.
For example, a few years back…
Target customers were hit by a major credit card security breach (imagine if that was YOUR business?)
Payment card information was stolen from an unknown number of Target Corp. customers starting on the busiest Black Friday weekend. The Secret Service is investigating, according to a spokesman for the agency, which safeguards the nation’s payment systems. Target officials did not respond to requests for comment.
- The breach involved nearly all of Target’s 1,797 stores in the United States!
- The report said that at least 1 million payment cards were thought to have been stolen before Target uncovered the operation, but that the number could be significantly higher.
When all is said and done, this one will put its mark up there with some of the largest retail breaches to date. As noted, this has already happened to larger companies such as Target, Citibank, and Sony, and should cause small business owners to think seriously about email security.
- The Hacking Team was just one of many security vendors that sold or gave away hacking tools to criminals. In 2014, the FBI uncovered evidence that the Chinese government had been selling hacking tools to criminal groups for years. It wasn’t just the Chinese government either, security vendors were also selling their hacking tools to criminals. The problem with this is that it could be anyone out there buying or selling these tools. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of hackers wanting to attack others, there’s always someone out there that wants to ruin your day.
So, what can you do?
One of the easiest options is email encryption. Did we mention it is easy? Yes, it’s really easy.
Why do it?
Email encryption offers you an extra layer of security, as the data inside the email is secured and cannot be opened or read by anyone who is not authorized to do so.
