Email is the easiest gateway for the attackers to enter directly into the system of the organization.
As businesses today completely rely on emails even for their confidential conversation, they are a great point of attack for the Hackers to get access to the data to accomplish massive ransomware attacks.
In today’s time where hacking is also a part of a business, these criminals are very precise to find the most vulnerable asset of an organization to find an easier route to their destination. What better than an insecure email to execute their ill thoughts?
Looking at the facts, the business email attacks have spiked over 269% in 2019 and have overpassed $26 billion in the past two-three years. These global losses are a mirror to the increasing need for businesses to understand the urgency to improve the security for their business emails.
So let’s get straight to the point and know about the repercussion of weak email security measures for business.
Threats for the Business That Arises Due to Poor Email Security
Business Can Be a Part of Different Cyber Attacks
Lack of email security in an organization might lead it to be the target of different cyber attacks like phishing, spoofing, business email compromise (BEC) attack, and ransomware attack where the hackers try to access the organizational information in different forms.
The phishing attack is a kind of email scam where some emails are sent to the people in the organization asking for business information, login credentials, and bank details. These emails appear to be from legitimate sources but contain malicious attachments and links which act as a door to company information.
Taking these phishing attacks to the next level, there is a socially engineered email attack that targets only high-positioned company officers who are responsible for performing some important financial transactions for the organization.
This attack is called a business email compromise (BEC) attack where these reputed employees of the company are sent emails fakely arriving from a bank, client, or the CEO of the company asking for the fund transfer or requesting for access.
Apart from this, the absence of email security can cause many other effects on the firm and the people related to it.
You May Read: Stay Safe in Spoofing and Phishing
Creates a Sense of Fear in the Employees
Most of the email attacks in an organization occur due to human error as attackers target the weak employees of the company. Here deep research is made on the behavioral pattern of the employees to find the easiest target. Based on the data collected an email is sent which looks like it arrived from their colleague or some authority.
The pressure of being a part of the scam or being one of the reasons/target for such a data breach where the company has a risk to lose thousands of dollars creates a sense of fear in them which might result in poor work productivity.
Such factors also create internal trust issues among the employees thus affecting the work culture of the company.
Data Breach Can Place the Business in Risk
The hackers today are smart enough to target the ones where they could get a high ROI on their investment. Well, talking about big businesses, they have thousands of confidential data stored in their computers which can change the number of business revenues.
Attackers take the path through a link or an email attachment to this information locally stored in the computers to release trojans and viruses, this malware is designed to take control over the information, denying access to it for the real holder of the data.
The organization leader has to pay a great amount to these hackers to save the company data and thus are seen to be facing losses in the business. Here the company also has to pay penalties to their clients and employees in case their personal data are revealed.
The company also falls in the pit where they lose important research, customer list, future strategies to some wrong hands.
Destroy the Business Reputation in the Market
Customer relationships are built on trust. A client only handover’s sensitive data about his business as he trusts the company to keep it safe and confidential. Data breach attacks like this create a question on the company policies and reputation and distrust among the clients.
As these attacks are directly going to affect the client’s data, the market value of the business owner reduces. The victim firm also faces a loss in the customer base as no one will be interested in working with someone who already has been part of such scams and it becomes harder than before for the owner to regain the confidence in its customer.
Here the firm has to prove its ability once again to ensure its customers that they are safe to work with. Apart from this, there are also cases where the email attackers hamper data to send the wrong information to clients thus creating disputes and breaking existing deals.
In Summary
Small businesses are completely dependent on emails for their every professional conversation. These emails contain data that probably are not meant to be shared or revealed. Lacking in the safety of such a mode of professional communication can cost millions to the victim firm.
These data breaches attack not only affect the revenue numbers of the company but are responsible for the many other downfalls that come along. From brand reputation to the high paying data breach penalties, the email scams have a lot more for the company to face.
