Email security and privacy awareness course

To mark the end of the year, we thought it useful to propose an email security and privacy course to enrich the learning and awareness of our users. We made a content based course by putting together all the important and related aspects of email security and privacy. While the entire course takes around an hour of reading, it is presented in a number of short blogposts that only take a couple of minutes.  We hope our course will help you in raising the bar of your email data security and privacy!

Set your personal threat profile

We do realize that many people can feel overwhelmed by amount of tips and recommendations put forth. This may make you feel like there’s little hope out there, and that many of the tips are for security experts.

The reality is that everything is a trade-off.  You just need to determine yours.

• Assess your own risk and your comfort with risk to identify what security measures are relevant to you
  • For example:  do you feel you need to send all your text messages with end-to-end encryption via a specific app?
• The effort for security precautions can range from easy one-time changes to bigger, long-term shifts in habits
  
  • Security takes work. Doing nothing is so much easier than doing the work needed to make yourself more secure.
• Just because you might not understand the technology or have not yet heard of the security measure does not mean it is something you can or should ignore.
  • A good judgement is always needed, but it is worth doing a little internet surfing if there is a term you are not familiar with before ruling something out.

So, regardless of your personal threat profile, pretty much everyone will find useful tips when reading this email security and privacy course.

Email privacy and security awareness course

• Protect your data – 4 min read

Protecting your data is the very first step in securing your digital life.

• Protect your device – 3 min read

Protecting your device is the second and most important step. You need to understand that your device is the gateway to your digital life.  The more secure it is, the more effective your defense measures will be.  An important thing to remember is that if your device has been compromised, all the other protective measures will be in vein.

• Keep your email account secure – 2 min read

Securing your email account means protecting your online identity since your emailaddress is associated with almost everything you do online.

• Bad Password Habits – 3 min read

Following good password habits is a key factor in making all of your online and offline defenses stronger. There certainly are password managers, that do a great job.  However, avoiding bad password habits is something that you should do yourself.

• Social Engineering

Humans are not perfect, and they are considered as the weakest link in any sort of defense. The thing that make us vulnerable is the tendency to trust someone or something based on certain criteria.  This section will briefly go through every aspect of Social engineering.

– What is Social Engineering? – 6 min read

– Social Engineering: What is Tailgating? – 2 min read

– Social engineering: Quid Pro Quo attacks – 2 min read

– Social Engineering: What is baiting? – 2 min read

– Social Engineering: What is pretexting? – 3 min read

– Social Engineering: What is Phishing? – 5 min read

– Social Engineering: What is Vishing? – 5 min read

– Social Engineering: What is Smishing? – 3 min read

– Tips on how to avoid social engineering schemes – 3 min read

• Prevent your device on becoming a zombie? – 3 min read

Now that we have discussed the aspects of securing your data, lets now discuss some of the consequences that could occur in case your device or account gets compromised. We’ll also go through the steps that you can take to avoid such a situation.

• Protect yourself from ransomware – 3 min read

Another potential consequence of a compromised device or account is ransomware. This post will discuss the related aspects in detail.

• Email privacy expectations! – 4 min read

The myriad ways we send, receive, store, and use email messages make securing and enhancing email privacy a very difficult problem.  This blogpost gives you an overview of resulting privacy issues.

• Safeguard your online privacy – 2 min read

Finally, we would like to end this course by looking at the different aspects of online privacy in general.

At Mailfence, not only do we aim to make our platform more private and secure, we also try to make our users aware of the importance of improving their email security and privacy in general. We believe that a secure and private digital world can only be achieved if both the creators and users play their respective parts. We hope that this course will prove useful, while we continue to strive in making your emails more secure and private.

However if you still have some friends/colleagues who would ask why to take such a course, then following comic will suffice.

Should you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Get your secure email!

Follow us on twitter/reddit and keep yourself posted at all times.

The Mailfence Team

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