Top 5 Ways to Prevent Email-Borne Virus Attack

Emails remain the cheapest, fastest and reliable means of communication in modern business. It is used widely amongst companies to convey relevant information to customers, partners, and suppliers. However, emails can serve as a gateway for the transmission of viruses on computers.  An IBM Security white paper, prepared by Vijayalakshmi Adluru, (2017), states that there are approximately 215 Billion emails sent every day and nearly 2 of every 3 emails are spam. Adluru, further emphasizes that email is the first security gap targeted by attackers.

According to a report authored by MessageLabs Intelligence (2010), “Every day, organizations face potential communication, operational and intellectual asset loss from email-borne threats, such as viruses, spam, trojans, spyware, and phishing.  Without effective defenses, these disruptions can create significant costs and losses”.

An email-borne virus is a malicious software that is usually transmitted as an attachment in email messages. When executed successfully, an email-borne virus can replicate itself within seconds and cause exceptionally grave damage to a users’ computer. The following are the top 5 ways to prevent email-borne attacks.

1. Install an antivirus software on your computer: An effective antivirus software can help to scan incoming emails, detect malicious attachments, and run on email gateways to prevent or block email-based attacks. Visit gesatech.net to find a good antivirus software package.
2.  Update your anti-virus regularly: New viruses are constantly emerging, as such maintaining a regular update of your anti-virus software program to its latest definitions is critical to preventing email-borne viruses.
3. Exercise caution when opening your email attachments: Always check to be sure that email attachments received are from well-known sources. Email attachments from unknown sources are often the root of viruses. Verifying the source of emails before opening them up can save you a great deal of loss. Also, check for strange filename extensions of email attachments before opening it. For instance, an odd filename extension may come in the form of “heythere.pif.doc”.
4. Turn off your file preview feature in Outlook: File preview feature grants users access to view received attachments in outlook without opening it in a separate application and this can be harmful if the attachment contains viruses. Always keep your file preview feature off to stay safe from intrusive viruses.
5. Get an Email Security Gateway: An email security gateway is effective for blocking emails with malicious content that compromises a company’s email policy. This minimizes the number of successful compromises to the hosts, user credentials and data. For this purpose, view Proofpoint essentials to get a good email security gateway.