How to protect your computer

It’s fair to say that by now most regular users of the internet and email systems are wary of opening emails from unknown senders, especially those with titles such as “Important News: You have Won!’ or “Very important security warning from [insert name of bank]’. But whilst emails promising us riches beyond our dreams if we will only click on the link provided are something that most of us will just send straight to our spam folder, there are plenty of viral emails that we open unwittingly.

Viruses are sent maliciously and will do a good job of wreaking havoc on your computer and network. It’s not always possible to spot a viral email before you open it, especially because sometimes they are sent from people in our contacts list who have (unbeknownst to us) had their email account hacked and their contact list hijacked.

Email security for individuals is thus usually limited to not opening unfamiliar emails. For businesses, having a secure email system in place is vital to the effective and efficient running of the workplace. Unfortunately, it is often hard to find the time and keep up with the latest developments in email security when you have a business to run: that time and energy is better spent within the business, helping it to grow. That’s why so many businesses choose to employ outside email security experts such as mimecast.com to conduct effective email management.

That means removing cloud-based threats by filtering spam, phishing and malware and by monitoring your outgoing emails to protect against unintended or deliberate data leaks and social engineering attacks.

Mimecast can also manage your email storage, dumping spam and ensuring that emails containing important data or communications are kept safe and not deleted or lost (this is especially important to protect against data loss that might arise as a result of a physical loss of hardware such as laptops, for example by an employee working from home).

It is important to educate all employees as to the importance of keeping sensitive corporate information safe – since using outside agencies to patrol your emails and ensure that they are properly safeguarded might be compromised if an employee writes down their usernames and passwords somewhere that is not secure, or by using their personal email accounts to transmit personal data. Other than that, you can leave it to the professionals to organise and closely monitor your email security.