Email Security Audit: Step-by-Step Guide 101

Everyone business receives emails daily. Some land in spam while the others reach the inbox. Email is vital for communications these days and is non-negotiable. The problem is, when someone uses it for the wrong reasons and attempts to hijack your organization. Email security is more than just following a checklist of security measures. It covers audits, maintaining compliance, and protecting sensitive information by using the latest threat detection tools and techniques. Hackers don’t go after technology, they go after the people using them.

Businesses need to conduct a comprehensive email security audit at least once per year to identify vulnerabilities within their organization, but they aren’t doing that.

Email remains a core element within our day-to-day business communication, with 93% of employees rating it as important or very important to their routine work. But just 24% of IT leaders actually match up their security budget with their real risks — which leaves organizations wide open to email threats.

Zivver’s survey data reveals only 52% of employees follow the email security policies despite 73% of employees knowing them. This indicates the critical requirement for security to provide businesses with a valid response to email cyber-attack threats like spoofing, malware, phishing, and unauthorized access.

This guide is perfect for business owners, IT professionals, and cybersecurity experts looking to ensure a thorough email security audit. Now let’s look at why you need to run an email security audit program, its key components, and the steps to perform an effective audit.

What is an Email Security Audit?

An email security audit is a practice of securing email communication by ensuring the safety of email accounts, emails, and sensitive data. It is a type of audit that focuses only on assessing the security of the emails. It checks the effectiveness of your email system against cyber threats such as phishing, malware, spam, and unauthorized access. By performing an email security audit, you can:

1. Safeguard your sensitive data from being stolen by attackers.
2. Stop phishing or scams where a hacker may attempt to get your passwords or other information.
3. Stop malware and ransomware, which can encrypt your files or taint your computers.
4. Ensure compliance with security standards and regulations depending on the industry.
5. Review the level of security of the backups and storage areas.

Why is an Email Security Audit Important?

Cybercriminals are implementing advanced methods for attacks by integrating artificial intelligence. Any vulnerability in the email can lead to data leaks, financial loss, or ID theft. Hence, it is essential to conduct security audits to safeguard personal or business email from threats. Some important reasons to conduct an email security audit are:

1. Identify vulnerabilities: Security audits can help you spot email system weaknesses, such as outdated encryption, weak passwords, or unprotected servers. By identifying and addressing the vulnerabilities, you can prevent unauthorized email access to reduce the risk of costly data breaches.
2. Improve compliance with regulations: Many organizations need to comply with industry standards, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). An email security audit can help you keep your security measures updated and compliant with regulations.
3. Enhance employee training: Email security threats are evolving rapidly, so regular employee training is essential for keeping them informed. A thorough audit can check employees’ awareness of email security protocols, phishing attacks, password management, and handling of sensitive information.
4. Strengthen overall security: Email is a vital part of our work and life, so it is crucial to secure it. Audit results can help you improve current security measures and ensure that the data is encrypted during email communication. Thus, you can protect it from being intercepted by unauthorized users.
5. Mitigating data breaches: Email security audits can help organizations stay ahead of emerging threats like phishing or BEC and ensure they maintain adequate defenses against these attacks. You can avoid potential cyber-attacks by maintaining detailed logs of the email access activities and monitoring the activities for any unusual patterns.

Common Email Security Threats

A survey shows that 74% of security breaches involve a human element, including human error, stolen credentials, and privilege misuse. Yet, leaders are ignoring this factor while creating an email security policy. Here are some of the biggest threats to your email security:

1. Phishing: Phishing is a significant cyber threat that targets businesses of all sizes. In this attack, cybercriminals send fraudulent emails or messages that appear to come from authentic sources. These emails aim to access sensitive information like login credentials, financial data, or proprietary business information.
2. Malware: Cybercriminals use malware to steal data, disrupt operations, or gain unauthorized access to systems. Malware is any harmful software that can damage your computer systems by infecting them through email attachments or links.
3. Spoofing: Spoofing is a type of cyber attack in which a person or program pretends to be someone or something else to deceive and gain access to valuable information or systems. Attackers use a malicious link or email for this purpose.
4. Ransomware: Ransomware is malicious software (malware) that infects the system and encrypts data or blocks access to a computer system until a ransom is paid. In this process, cybercriminals encrypt the files, make them inaccessible, and demand a payment in exchange for the decryption key.
5. Business email compromise (BEC): Business email compromise is an advanced cyberattack in which criminals take business e-mail accounts. Then they exploit these compromised accounts to deceive employees or stakeholders into transferring money or sensitive information to the attackers.

Key Components of an Email Security Audit

Regular email security audits can improve your defense against sensitive data breaches posed by phishing, malware, and ransomware. By updating security policies, enabling advanced protections, and monitoring for suspicious behavior, you can minimize the risk of a data breach and keep your communications private. The following are key elements to cover in an audit:

1. Authentication and access controls: By understanding system vulnerabilities, you can proactively implement steps to secure email data. An email security audit can help you improve the user authentication process by suggesting:

• Strong password policies, such as using complex passwords and avoiding reuse.
• Using multi-factor authentication, as it adds an extra layer of security.
• Access restrictions to limit email access based on roles, devices, or locations.

1. Email filtering and spam security: Whenever you perform an email security audit, make sure that filters are set up to filter out phishing emails, spam, and malicious attachment emails. Security software can also help find harmful content in attachments and links. You can achieve that when you conduct an email security audit.

1. Email encryption and data protection: Email encryption ensures email does not go or land into the hands of the wrong person. Encrypting emails helps in proactive risk assessment, preventing data breaches, and avoiding penalties through:

• TLS encryption to prevent unauthorized interception.
• End-to-end encryption to protect sensitive emails so only intended recipients can read them.
• Data loss prevention to avoid accidental sharing of sensitive information.

1. User training and awareness: Security audits allow us to highlight inefficiencies in email systems, such as slow routing or insecure configurations. Based on the audit results, customized training modules can be designed to address specific weaknesses. These training modules are updated regularly according to the changing email security features.

1. Phishing awareness: Phishing attacks are simulated in security audits to check whether employees are able to identify and report phishing emails. This process would involve the identification of suspicious email attachments, the handling of sensitive information, and the protocols to follow in such scenarios.

1. Increase effectiveness: Optimal email routing makes emails reach their destination as fast as possible by identifying the shortest routes. You can also improve email efficiency by using spam filters to prevent unwanted emails from reaching the inbox and sorting emails by priority to assist the user in identifying the most critical emails.

How to Conduct an Email System Audit? (Step-by-Step)

Conducting an email system audit is an essential process for maintaining the security and confidentiality of your email communications. To ensure that the necessary policies in place are up to date and adequate, they need to be reviewed. Here is a step-by-step guide to assess the security and efficiency of your email system and find ways to improve it.

Step  1: Define scope and objectives

Determine what part of your email system is to be audited. This could be security, compliance, performance, and users. Set certain objectives for the audit to include assessing risks, making sure that whatever is being done is legal, or improving the efficiency of the email system.

Step 2: Gather information

Write down all the information that will be needed for the audit: email servers, clients, and other related infrastructure components. Learn about all the current access control policies, that is, who can access what. Verify the current security features including encryption, firewalls, and anti-malware solutions.

Step 3: Review email security policies

Contrast your security policies with the best practices advised for your sector and the legal standards. To confirm if your email is encrypted and secure, check that your email has been encrypted with a strong encryption standard such as TLS. Require two or more factors to be used to log in to email accounts and grant access to the email account based on the role of the user.

Step 4: Review email filtering and monitoring

There should be advanced spam and phishing filters in place to help in the identification and prevention of malicious emails. Also, it is recommended to monitor real-time email traffic for suspicious activity and unusual email traffic. This way, you can stop the transfer of sensitive information within the company without authorization.

Step 5: Test for vulnerabilities

To identify the possible weaknesses in your email platforms and the need for your employees’ training, you should conduct vulnerability tests. Document these weaknesses and failures, and explain the potential threats. Then, review your incident response plan to determine if anything is missing or if there is any need to update it.

Step 6: Review employee training and awareness

Find out the present state of your organization’s employee training programs regarding email security guidelines. Conduct frequent phishing simulations and training sessions for your employees. Schedule and update these sessions as needed.

Step 7: Conduct security audits and assessments

Frequent audits can help you determine the strengths and weaknesses of current security measures. Thus, you can improve your email system by securing the network and systems based on the best industry practices.

Step 8: Implement changes and monitor progress

Create a specific plan of action to overcome challenges, schedule work, and share it among the team members. Implement changes and alter the necessary settings to improve the email security level. Monitor the progress of the changes made and conduct follow-up audits to determine their effectiveness.

Email Security Audit Checklist

An email security audit checklist is a tool to ensure that all important aspects of an email system are up to date. Thorough security audits can ensure that your email platforms are secure, legal, and robust to attacks. An email audit results can help you update security controls based on the latest threat information. Here’s the checklist to help you conduct a comprehensive email security audit.

1. Evaluate security policies and protocols: An email audit checks whether security policies comply with the best practices and industry regulations. It ensures policies cover threats like phishing, malware, and unauthorized access. You must conduct periodic reviews to address evolving security risks.
2. Assess encryption standards: An email security audit checks whether your encryption policies are implemented across all communication channels and whether you are using end-to-end encryption for sensitive emails. It also analyzes encryption strength to verify that deprecated protocols are disabled.
3. Verify authentication and access limitation: An email security audit enables multi-factor authentication and role-based access control to restrict access. It ensures that password policies enforce strong, unique passwords for all users. It audits user email access to remove unnecessary permissions and avoid data thefts.
4. Conduct vulnerability tests: An audit can simulate phishing attacks and perform penetration tests on email systems to evaluate employee awareness. It scans email servers for vulnerabilities and outdated software, analyzes attack trends, and adjusts security measures accordingly.
5. Employee training and awareness: An audit determines the impact of email security training programs and checks whether employees are aware of recent trends. It can help you simulate real-world phishing attempts and evaluate employee responses to phishing simulations.
6. Evaluate incident response plan: An email security audit program can review and determine the effectiveness of your incident response plan. It can help you assign clear roles and responsibilities for email security incidents and test incident response thoroughly.

Email Security Assessment: Key Areas to Evaluate

Assessing email security is an ongoing process that helps you avoid new threats and suggest changes in your security system. It also helps you to develop and implement new mitigation strategies like enhanced email encryption and updated training programs. An email assessment program evaluates the following key areas:

1. Assets and data: The first step of an email assessment is to list what you need to protect. This includes email servers, user accounts, and important data like financial details, personal information, and confidential documents.
2. Threats and vulnerabilities: The next step is to detect vulnerabilities and security threats, such as phishing attacks, malware, ransomware, email spoofing, unauthorized access, and business email compromise.
3. Current policies and security measures: Check whether current policies and systems are sufficient to protect your emails. Ensure systems like spam filters, antivirus software, encryption protocols, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) are already in place.
4. Potential impact: In case of a security threat or cyber-attack, an email audit can help quantify the damage it has caused and the cost of recovering the data. This includes assessment of financial loss, legal issues, damage to reputation and business, and operational disruptions.
5. Risk levels: Determine the probability for each potential threat and its effects to understand the overall risk. Classify the risks into low, medium, or high categories using this probability matrix. For each risk category, formulate the strategy to minimize the threat.

Common Email Security Audit Challenges and Solutions

A security audit must be carried out to ensure that your system remains safe from any possible threat. Performing thorough security audits can help you detect and avoid vulnerabilities before they become serious threats. Yet organizations continue to struggle with these audits. Some of the common challenges and how to resolve them are listed below.

1. Weak passwords: The first cause of email account hacking is weak passwords and unauthorized access. Many users still use weak or reused passwords despite the numerous warnings, which makes it simple for hackers to gain access to their email accounts. The solution is to:

• Implement strict password policies (minimum of 12 characters long, containing a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols).
• Deploy multi-factor authentication (MFA) for additional security.
• Send frequent reminders to employees to change passwords

1. Bad spam and malware protection: Some spam messages may contain attachments or links that land users in a malware infection. This makes all your sensitive information accessible to hackers. The solution is to use advanced spam filters to block unwanted emails and scan all email attachments and links for malware before sending them. Also, limit users’ ability to open malicious attachments or click on unrecognized links.
2. Insider threats and human errors: Employees might make avoidable mistakes and send sensitive information to the wrong individual or become victims of phishing scams. The fix is to prevent this error through Data Loss Prevention (DLP) technology to identify and prevent unauthorized data sharing. Periodic cybersecurity training for employees can also help them understand the security risks. Role-based access controls can define who has access to important email data.
3. Poor monitoring and logging: Without tracking your emails, security breaches may go undetected, leaving hackers free to roam. Real-time monitoring to identify questionable login attempts and suspicious email behavior can make a difference. Harmful activity detection means monitoring access and creating automated alerts for threats like mass email sending or failed login attempts.
4. Absence of a backup and recovery plan: Once emails are lost, e.g. if they are attacked by cyber-crimes, deleted by mistake or the system fails, it becomes cumbersome to recover them. Solutions you can follow include:

• Backup your email regularly on a secure cloud or external storage.
• Store important email messages automatically in email archiving systems.
• Have a disaster recovery plan ready to restore lost data as soon as possible.

1. Compliance and regulations challenges: Organizations handling email security must follow industry regulations. They must regularly review security policies and update them to meet compliance requirements. Enforce email retention policies for adequate data storage and deletion. Also, frequently check for compliance with data protection regulations and security loopholes.

How SentinelOne can help?

SentinelOne can help organizations enhance their email security posture by using advanced threat intelligence to prevent potential threats. The experts can help you identify the risks and the best ways to avoid them include the following ways:

1. Extended detection and response (XDR): SentinelOne’s XDR platform combines the best of network and cloud security measures to offer end-to-end protection. It incorporates machine learning and AI to identify and counter email threats like phishing, malware, and ransomware.
2. Real-time monitoring and analysis: SentinelOne offers real-time email traffic monitoring to detect unusual activities and threats. It can examine email activities to detect abnormalities and prevent cyber attacks before they cause any damage.
3. Automated incident response: SentinelOne automates incident response and applies it within the email security system. It offers a comprehensive report on the email security audit to help organizations understand the risks of the threats.
4. Compliance and regulatory support: SentinelOne guarantees that the email security measures are consistent with industry regulations and standards including GDPR,  HIPAA, and PCI DSS. It can help you conduct a comprehensive email security audit to determine and overcome any compliance issues.
5. User education and awareness: SentinelOne’s global threat intelligence can analyze emails coming from different source. SentinelOne can conduct simulated phishing attacks on your existing infrastructure to probe for various security vulnerabilities. Its Offensive Security Engine™ with Verified Exploit Paths™ can take on the attacker’s mindset and test your employees’ security awareness and training skills. Any security insights you gain with Purple AI, you can implement them in your upcoming training sessions. They can help equip employees with the skills to recognize and respond effectively to future phishing attempts.

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Conclusion

Emails are among the most vital communication tools for businesses and individuals. But it is also an attractive target for cybercriminals seeking to exploit vulnerabilities through phishing, spyware, or unauthorized access. Here is where the email security audit comes into play. With regular testing and enhancement of your organization’s email security practices, you will be able to drill down into weaknesses, avoid potential data breaches, and ensure compliance with industry standards.

You cannot wait for the attack to happen. So start taking charge of your email security now. SentinelOne’s AI-powered threat detection and automated response can give you real-time protection against the most advanced email-based threats. Discover how SentinelOne can protect your business today.