It is important to always be security conscious, especially when securing and interacting with our emails. Email scams and security breaches are not a new thing, they have been a common form of scam for years.
Many people use email to communicate to one another, many of us transfer personal information, credentials, confidential data, imagery and videos over email. Some of this information includes personally identifying information, internet banking, credit card details, home addresses and numbers. Because of this highly confidential data we need to make sure we have sound security procedures in place for securing and interacting with our emails.
Lucky for you, I have gathered our 5 most important email security tips.
For each email account you have, you need to have an individual, unique and complex password. If a hacker hacked into your personal email, which was linked to social media accounts, some emails were from your work account, many hackers would then try to log into each account they can see with the same credentials. Having a unique password for each account means if one account gets compromised, the hacking stops there.
Most passwords should contain 8-10 characters, with numbers and case differences. The longer the password and different the character types are, the more difficult it is to hack into.
NOTE: Yes, I know it can be tough to remember all of these different passwords - which is why there are some good password management software out there! (which I will do a whole other article about another time for you).
Phishing scams are emails from hackers and scammers pretending to be someone else that you would likely trust - like your postal office, bank or even Microsoft. These can look like real businesses and people, but there are giveaway signs that they're faking it.
Tell-tale signs to look out for are:
It is important you don't click any links in an email you suspect is scam or phishing, if you hover a link in the bottom of your screen you will see the real link appear.
Phishing emails will have a "click here" or "log in" link on their emails, which will lead you to a fake site. Whereas real companies will never ask you to provide information, and won't ask you to log in from an email, the will tell you to go to their website and login manually without any links.
Do not open an attachment from someone you don't know, or aren't expecting. Even if you do know the email address, still scan the attachment with your anti-virus first. A free online scanner you can use is Virus Total, you can copy and paste a link or upload a file without downloading it and Virus Total will scan the conents through multiple Anti-Virus scanners for you.
In the workplace if you need someone else to have access to your emails while you are away, contact your IT company as access can be given without the need to share your passwords. At home, if you need someone to access your email, log in yourself or text them a temporary password that you'll change as soon as they are done. If you are ever concerned someone else may have logged in as you, many email hosting companies allow you the option to log out of other devices. If you are still concerned, change your password frequently.
The national ITC Office based at the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) awarded the tender to Aiscorp, a Wellington-based IT solutions specialist, now its technology partner for the upgrade of its network infrastructure. Aiscorp was selected for a multitude of reasons including that the company had worked with the Government of Niue on a similar IT solutions rollout.
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