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Political email hacks raise awareness about corporate email security

Annie Baxter Nov 1, 2016
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Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Political email hacks raise awareness about corporate email security

Annie Baxter Nov 1, 2016
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
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COPY

Think of all the times you’ve emailed a colleague instead of walking over to say something, and you start to appreciate how big a role email plays in the American workplace. Not really feasible to ditch it. But cybercriminals have plenty of reasons to try and infiltrate corporate emails — to get financial information about employees or customers, or to steal a firm’s intellectual property. And email has a lot of vulnerabilities. If you use unsecured Wi-Fi to work at a coffee shop, for example, you could be vulnerable to an attack.

Cyber security experts say employers should use measures like end-to-end encryption, two-factor authentication for log ins and encourage employees to use strong passwords. But as quickly as companies work to implement safeguards, the cybercriminals are finding workarounds. Which is why companies really need to focus on educating employees about good habits. Turns out, humans are still the weak links — and even if we were to shift away from email, the bad guys would find a way to exploit that.

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