Another Benefit to Email Archiving: An End-around to Hackers
If you’re a regular user of public email, chances are high that your inbox has become a target of fraudsters. In fact, cyber hackers and software bugs have dominated national news in 2014, and there appears to be no end in sight to the inundation of spam and the dangers of your personal information ending up in the wrong hands.
In other words, email archiving could prove pivotal to anyone whose account has been, or is at future risk of being compromised. And just how many potential accounts are we talking? We’d like to say anyone who isn’t using a secure email network, but read on.
Nearly 700 million people worldwide use Yahoo or Google’s Gmail at a time when security attacks are becoming a more regular occurrence. The former was the target of an attack on January 30, with usernames and passwords stolen from a large number of email customers. Unfortunately, Yahoo didn’t say how many “impacted accounts” there were, and said the problem likely stemmed from a third-party database compromise.
The Yahoo breach also came a week after Gmail went down, locking some people out of their inbox for nearly an hour. The company later blamed the problem – which also affected Google+, Calendar and Documents – on a bug, and said in a blog post they were working hard to ensure the problem doesn’t happen again.
Business Risks Relating to Public Email
If your company relies on public email such as Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, or Zoho, it may want to consider the switch to a multi-layered (secure) infrastructure. This is because email acts as much more than a point of contact for business owners and employees. Documents and information transferred quickly and easily at the click of a mouse becomes an instant portal to data such as client rosters, addresses, phone numbers, personal calendars, sales receipts and even credit card or bank account details. All stuff worth archiving, but certainly not worth losing.
But wait, there’s more.
As hacking attacks against email accounts have grown bigger and bolder, many fail to realize these cyber criminals aren’t just hacking public networks. They’re hacking single employees, or end users. The reason? Employees have almost unlimited opportunities to accidentally compromise valuable company information. By clicking on legitimate-looking emails from hackers, they download viruses that bypass corporate firewalls and other security measures. And once that can of worms is opened, it can affect an untold number of people.
In the end…
A formal Email Archiving protocol could save you a lot of grief, not to mention your business reputation, if your public or private email account is compromised and important information and timely correspondence is lost. Contact us to learn how we can make your email recovery process easy and efficient.
