Why you should not open each letter you get in your email?

E-mail is exposed to threats in terms of information security. So, along with the economic benefits of its use, more and more organizations are suffering from the damage caused by e-mail attackers.

Threats associated with the e-mail

In today’s world, computer information technology is evolving rapidly and making a significant difference in our lives. Information has become a commodity that can be bought, sold, or exchanged. At the same time, the cost of information is often hundreds of times higher than the cost of the computer system in which it is stored. E-mail is one of the most popular and widely used types of service, both in corporate networks and on the Internet. The message sent by e-mail reaches the recipient in minutes, although he is at a distance of several thousand kilometers. Today, e-mail brings together people from different companies, countries, and regions and is the most important means of communication, information sharing, and management of various business processes.

Spam, avalanches, leaks of confidential information are the main problems faced by e-mail users. It is related to the insufficient level of protection of modern e-mail systems. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively address the security of this service based on cryptographic methods, content analysis methods, organizational measures, and the use of digital signatures, which are implemented in the PGP method.

Methods of protecting information when using e-mail

Two standards are widely used to encrypt mail: S/MIME (uses the public key infrastructure) and OpenPGP (uses certificates with a trust scheme grouped around the user). They allow you to provide – change protection, non-revocable signature, and privacy.

E-mail encryption is used, of course, not only to protect against too inquisitive providers but also to ensure the confidentiality of correspondence in general. Encryption can be provided:

  • Mail provider. In this case, the provider provides the appropriate service. Preferred service with end-to-end encryption. In some cases, the encryption provided by the provider may be a convenient option. 
  • The user himself. You encrypt the message on your computer before sending an email. This is a more universal way, and if you choose a popular standard for encryption you will be able to maintain the flexibility of the approach: the participants will be able to choose the encryption tools that use this standard.

Virtual Data Room for business communication and organization

A good alternative to email is the Virtual Data Room. You would probably think what is data room (virtual data room cos’è)? Today, most global corporations prefer this service for providing a secure working environment.Some companies even use virtual portals to hold conferences and discuss and make important decisions

There are main principles of the Data Room functionality:

  • Availability. the property of the service to be available and applicable at the request of the authorized entity.
  • Service levels. They are defined in the service level agreement between the service provider and the consumer based on certain terms to establish the quality of services provided by the cloud service provider.
  • Governance. It is providing the supplier with a rational allocation of user resources and the implementation of specified in the agreement on the provision of services operations on them.
  • Reversibility. It is the ability to recover user data after a failure and the ability to delete providers of all data and related service artifacts after a certain period specified in the service level agreement.
  • Security means ensuring security requirements, such as the availability of security mechanisms for authentication and identification, availability, confidentiality, integrity, audit, monitoring of events.