How Quickly Will You Recover From a Cyber Attack?

Emails are the lifeblood of business processes. It is the main communication between an enterprise and its clients, with vital, and sometimes sensitive information being shared between parties. That is why it’s important to protect business emails from cyber attacks. 

Protecting emails goes far beyond spam filtering of phishing emails filled with malware and ransomware. As more businesses migrate to Office 365 and other cloud-based solutions, email is a huge part of a cyber resilience strategy that keeps a business operating even during downtime or a data breach. 

It’s more vital than ever to ask yourself: how quickly will you recover from a cyber attack?

Email security and cyber resilience

When building your cyber resilience, you have to take a different approach regarding email security. In this instance, you have to assume you will be compromised at some point, rather than finding ways to prevent every possible email threat.

From this standpoint, you can then look at how quickly you can get your business back online and operating normally. If you continue to question what you should have done to prevent the attack, it won’t have a positive effect on the business. It’s important to remember that everything you do after the breach will determine your success.

A cloud-based email archiving solution is now a vital part of cyber resilience. In the event of a ransomware attack, a few computers may be taken down, however if emails and key operations are placed in an external cloud network, a business can still operate. Meanwhile, email disaster recovery plans are started to repair the damage from the attack.

Every business must have a disaster recovery plan in place, making it a top priority for all IT managers. This plan must also be part of a larger business resilience process that mitigates the threat due to the dangers that email-based attacks such as ransomware can cause. With better defence tools, such as spam filtering, a business can avoid having to proceed with its resilience plans.

Poor security

Despite the dangers stemming from ransomware attacks, lax security on emails is still one of the biggest factors in a cyber attack. According to a 2018 Trend Micro report, nearly 9 million high-risk emails were blocked by their systems as cyber criminals stepped up their attacks. 

This is only a small number in relation to how many high-risk emails are being sent to accounts globally that may now have sophisticated security measures in place. A simple spam filter provided by the email vendor isn’t enough, as even it can let dangerous mail slip into your inbox, meaning more must be implemented to secure businesses.

Risk management

If emails are missing their spam filters, there is a clear overreliance on ineffective email security solutions that continue to leave businesses at risk.

Businesses must address this gap for the betterment of future processes. Migrating to a cloud system is the perfect time to evaluate current strategies. Moving to the cloud requires a business to evolve the way its systems run, meaning a multi-layered defence strategy is needed. 

Cloud computing has an incredibly flexible infrastructure, allowing each layer to be protected by various cloud providers rather than a single entity. You can have one provider looking after cloud-based email while another looks after the email archive, while a managed service provider looks after your infrastructure.

Adding layers is also a great way to streamline your migration – for example, by adding a cloud email archive that works alongside your existing systems. Not only does it give your archive some resilience but also encourages a seamless migration process. 

With a careful multi-layered IT infrastructure, cyber resilience can become a reality, however this needs to be tested regularly to ensure recovery can take place. The reduced risk to sensitive data protects a business, while the cloud can be used to deliver vital cyber resilience for the future.

Build your cyber resilience with Cryoserver’s cloud email archiving solutions. Get in touch to get started.