Increase Your Data Security With The Right Email Service

In the mortgage industry, one of the often overlooked areas of data security is your email platform. Email gives your business the ability to communicate in real time with customers, realtors, and other financial institutions. With so much versatility and access, it makes sense that many data breaches happen via email systems.

Email Vulnerabilities

In the current political fracas surrounding Hillary Clinton's private email server, many people find themselves wondering about email security and information security in general. For mortgage companies, the security of your servers is vitally important to reduce the costs associated with fraud and to prevent access to your systems by undesired parties.

Data security in relation to email centers around technological and personal hacking techniques. When someone attempts to use technological means to access data, they will often do so through cloning a trusted site, embedding html viruses in emails, or other methods of deceiving people with information regarding your loan system. Personal means of hacking involve convincing someone to voluntarily give up information regarding their business. This often involves flattery, banking on empathy, or building a sophisticated relationship with the target.

Email provides opportunities for data breaches in both of these areas, and often malicious parties will use a combination of technical and personal means to access sensitive data. Because inbound emails are considered secure by many users of your system, many are fooled into a false sense of security. 

With many email systems, a simple click on an in text link can open malware, send you to a malicious site or notify a spammer that your account exists. Some of these events can be activated without clicking any link at all, simply through opening your email.

Many private servers are not equipped with the tools to scan emails for viruses, to scan links for potentially harmful websites, or to prevent unwanted spam.

Modern, Robust, Secure

Modern business email systems should enable your loan officers, franchise owners, or other mortgage professionals to communicate effectively and securely with customers, vendors, and other financial institutions. The right system will enable your business to build relationships and grow your business, no matter the costs.

A good email security plan integrates with your overall business security systems, including training for your mortgage professionals to prevent personal attacks and the most up-to-date IT security to prevent technological attacks.

A secure business email system will provide the following capabilities:

• Real-Time Scanning: Links in your emails are one of the most dangerous parts of your email. A good system will actually rewrite the URL so that the security system can perform risk assessment before your computer actually goes to the website.
• Continual Security: With redirects and clones, a link can be harmless one week and lead to a malware site the next week. Robust email-service providers scan the links each time they are clicked, preventing a bait and switch.
• Blocking Access: When a website is found to be untrusted by your email service provider, it will provide warnings and even block user access to prevent downloading of unwanted materials.

Email is one of the most powerful tools that mortgage professionals use, and is also one of the most vulnerable, when it does not have proper security. For more information on the security of your mortgage company, or to start your secure email service, please contact Access Business Technology.