How to prevent email abuse in your Business and Organizations?
This one issue can
compromise the entire reputation of your organization. A breach of trust with your Customer and Clients is very hard to recover from because it puts everyone on edge.
Organizations:
Organizations and companies need to take a pro-active role to
keeping their their information and Staff safe. Consideration needs to
be given to complying with local and federal laws. For those trading
or exchanging information internationally, due diligence must be exercised
to satisfy other
national requirements.
In a business situation, the employer is usually held responsible for
the actions of their Staff in matters involving harassment, obscenity
or defamation and abuse of personal privacy in the course of their employment or
even incidental to their employment. It is wise not to use your employer's
systems for your personal email, chats or personal searching.
1. - Ensure your "Systems Acceptable Use Policy" (SAUP) is up
to date, relevant, enforceable and distributed often. It is not enough
to just rely on a Staff member's consent to your SAUP that involves monitoring.
There need to be justification in the interest of providing a balanced
approach to preventing outside intrusion and that other alternatives
have been thoroughly investigated.
2.- Determine "Whom, When and Where", it is value to
the organization to have access to the Public internet or email
system and which users absolutely need access through permissions.
For example, the shipping department does not need access to
human resources records and vice vera. Though, they may need access to FedEx-UPS, JIT Customers and suppliers.
3.- Web sites- Do not post personal
email addresses on your site unless you want to receive a considerable
amount to spam generated from spiders that crawl web pages looking
for that information. It is sometimes more effective to change site
compromised email addressees frequently that to try to combat mounting spam- after
the fact.
We have found the company- sponsored blogs are not the place to air
out differences or opinions in public.
Needs-At the very least, Antispyware software
is a necessity in preventing your systems from becoming compromised
by botnets through false emails and bogus web sites which can appear as
your computer`s network addresses and take control of your system operations.
Next, a Firewall program
needs to be turned on since it is your first line of defense when it comes counteracting abuse. The
program needs to be able to automatically block or blacklist incoming and outgoing
traffic from a list of known intruder sites and ones you decide are inappropriate. The time you spend setting up & training
the software is well worth it in the long run since intruders are always
persistent. The Windows firewall or ISP provided programs, in our humble opinion, are far too basic
and predictable because of its wide spread use. We suggest the one bundled with an antivirus or Internet
security program.
Network security programs have centralized control for settings, updates and alerts. Even a small network will save money on per seat pricing and having one point of contact for ongoing support.
In terms of your organization's systems
monitoring, applications need to flexible enough to blend in with your
User Policies. They should not put undue strain or excess overheads
on your servers. There are several other considerations
that need to be addressed since computer security is an important need
in every facet of your operation.
