E-mail

Subject: Why your messages could be securely sent to clients using e-mail

Traditional mail, also known as postal mail, is still a great medium of relaying information to a party and the organization still uses this system for sending confidential documents. However, with recent technological achievements, the world has witnessed more secure, faster, and reliable ways of sending their information, including electronic mail (e-mail). In this e-mail, I am going to discuss how secure e-mail works. I will address the vulnerabilities, web and system security, system security firewalls, information protection practices, and firewall hardening that all impact the secure sending of the company's e-mails.

The World Wide Web Consortium, the organization responsible for the Web standards, has made strides in leading the World Wide Web to its full potential over the years. However, these efforts have been met with an almost equal opposition force from hackers working hard to prevent this. Web security has numerous vulnerabilities in its web protocols, tools, and applications that can be exploited. These vulnerabilities are introduced by web tools such as cookies, applets, SMTP, ActiveX, and JavaScript that are exploitable at the end of the day (Girotto, & Zorzo, 2020). These exploitable vulnerabilities may be introduced by the company's employees who use free IM tools that may expose the corporate's security, making sensitive and confidential data leak without the network administrator's knowledge.

Since electronic mail is web-based, the ramifications of a successful attack on it cannot be overlooked. Network administrators at the organization will have a great role in safeguarding this critical system from some drawbacks. These drawbacks include spamming, spoofing, session hijacking, data manipulation, and hoaxes. If this system is not protected, despite its many benefits to both individuals and corporates, it could lead to chaos and underproductivity in the corporate environment. Such vulnerabilities that attackers may exploit need to be safeguarded to ensure secure e-mails are sent or received. Wireless networks are also at a greater risk of being attacked than wired ones; sending electronic mail to clients involves the wireless network.  Despite their existing security measures like the WAP, WEP, and WTLS, many issues still exist because their physical layer is not contained. There are numerous vulnerabilities with these security protocols that are exploitable, and it calls for investing in components to safeguard the crucial system.

Another aspect that we will look at is the directory service, which is a network service identifying the resources present in a network and allowing access to applications. The organization should strive to have newer technologies in ensuring that our systems are secure. The company will automatically invest in LDAP to eliminate many user accounts and applications in the company's environments and access directory services over a network. The LDAP services may also be useful in finding the e-mail addresses that are not in the local contacts. This makes LDAP more likely to be attacked despite the FTP protocol, and security administrators should take early countermeasures against these attacks. The S/FTP is also a handy tool while sharing files over the internet that addresses some of the vulnerabilities in its latter, FTP (Girotto, & Zorzo, 2020).

However, despite all these drawbacks, technology is evolving, and there are ways to reduce the risks these attackers pose. Developments and efforts have been made towards data encryption that improves electronic mail security measures, making it hard for attackers to understand the messages transmitted over the internet. The advanced encryption standards alongside the public key encryption act to counteract the potential attacks (Wei, Chen, Wang, Hu, & Ma, 2019). Alternatively, technologies like VPNs ensure that our devices are safe as we communicate. These countermeasures ensure our safety and minimize the risk of attack from hackers. However, the company should also invest in technology and employee training to eliminate attack risks.

Since firewalls are network security devices that monitor and facilitate network traffic filtering, it is also very important in safeguarding the company's confidential information. In simple words, it is the barrier between the internet and a private network. Since multiple devices are used in securing our organization's environment, a firewall is among these components. This makes such components prone to attacks since they control storage, access, and transfer. I advise the organization to select various software and hardware firewalls depending on their needs and vulnerabilities. This may help the organization keep its mail confidential. These are just some ways of ensuring that the organization can use e-mail effectively to send confidential documents to its clients.

I will end by mentioning why electronic mail is better than traditional mail despite its challenges. The biggest advantage e-mails have over the traditional mail is that it is delivered faster. Electronic mail is cheaper, especially when using broadband to communicate with a wider audience. These are the major advantages it has over traditional mail. I would highly recommend that the company start using electronic mail while considering the security features I have outlined for fast and reliable information sharing.