Web and email security threats

While ensuring that your employees are cyber-security aware and understand the risks and dangers is important, you need a proactive web and email security strategy that will act as a defence barrier and quarantine any threats before they get to your network. Without this, businesses risk the spread and advance of malware, attacks on other websites, networks, and other IT infrastructures. Should cyber-criminals manage to infiltrate your business’s system, the attack has the potential to spread to every single computer on your network, making it increasingly difficult to pinpoint its origin. 

Organisations need to start taking a ‘prevention rather than cure’ approach to their web and email security strategy. IT security should be the primary focus for every business - especially if they want to scale and survive in the future. A cyber attack has the capability of destroying a business - from financially crippling them to ruining their brand image and trust, the devastating impact of a cyber-attack shouldn’t ever be ignored. 

According to Microsoft, a recent survey found that a data breach cost a business the average of £2.9 million. In most cases, once an organisation has suffered this catastrophic financial loss, they can no longer afford to operate. 

But what security threats are out there, and how can they impact your business? OGL have looked at three email and web security threats that are potentially putting your business at risk, and what you can do to prevent them from impacting your business. 

Business Email Compromise (BEC): This is a man-in-the-email exploit where a hacker gets access to business’s email accounts and then imitates the business owner’s identity with the aim of defrauding the company and gaining money.

Should a spoof phishing email land in your employee’s inbox, they need to be able to identify this threat. When you choose to invest in cloud-based email security software, you’ll have an added barrier of protection that will quarantine any suspicious emails and potential threats in real-time. 

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks: This is when the perpetrator seeks to take down a target’s network and resources so that its intended users cannot access it.  

By implementing a hybrid solution of cloud-based security and on-premise security, it means that you can detect any on-premise threats early on and then escalate it to the cloud when it’s become too big for on-premise to maintain.

Malware (also known as malicious software): This is a program or file that poses a threat and is harmful to a computer user. Sophisticated strains of malware can perform an array of functions, from hijacking computer functions to monitor a businesses computer action without permission, or encrypting and deleting sensitive data. 

When you choose a security software solution that looks for email and activity with web-borne malware in real-time, you’re adding that extra layer of protection. Implementing firewalls alongside this will also mean that you’re preventing any unauthorised activity from entering your network. 

Cindy Phillips, marketing manager at OGL, said: “OGL's Web Security service protects your business from harmful, offensive or inappropriate content. Our comprehensive real-time traffic inspection looks for web-borne malware that could be a potential threat to your business. 

“For that extra layer of security, our Email Security service offers protection for inbound and outbound emails. Using CensorNet's cloud-based technology, inbound and outbound emails are scanned for viruses, phishing threats, content violations and spam. By doing this in the cloud we remove the burden on your local server and can offer backup for unlimited email for up to seven years. It is up to you to put that extra protective barrier in place.”