Every second, more than 2 million emails are sent worldwide. These often include important files, documents, and letters as attachments. These attachments reach inboxes with little security screening, and hackers often use them as a gateway into corporate systems. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), questions arise regarding the transmission of data in this manner and the risk this may pose to your company’s obligation to protect the personal data of both your customers and your employees.
Uncontrollable Attachments
The moment you click “Send” on an email, you lose control over it and everything attached to it—forever. Documents can be downloaded, copied, shared, and re-downloaded over and over again, which poses an even greater problem if the message ends up in the wrong inbox. The document goes from being on one device to being on at least two devices, as well as in the inboxes of both the sender and the recipients.
Security—or the lack thereof…
It is undeniable that emails are not secure enough to include sensitive and potentially confidential information in their attachments. They are vulnerable, and you could face liability for GDPR non-compliance. Currently, more than 80% of cyberattacks use email attachments as a means of attack.
Did you receive my email?
It’s common to send an email and not know if it was received, opened, or ended up in the spam or junk folders. It’s not always possible to know if your email has been opened, if the attachment has been viewed, or who received it. If what you’re sending is important and needs to be seen, it’s vital that you know if it’s been opened and when. Sending to the wrong recipient or attaching the wrong file are among the most common causes of security breaches.
Employees seek alternative solutions for large files
Email attachments have a size limit, and if the file exceeds that limit, it cannot be sent. This can be easily avoided if you know your company’s server size limit, but it’s very possible that the recipient of your email has a much lower limit and won’t realize that your important document has been blocked by their automated systems.
The Alternative to Sending Email Attachments
It’s true that sending documents as email attachments is easy. It’s just as easy for cybercriminals, who can send out mass emails containing malicious files, hoping that an employee will click on them.
It is increasingly important for companies to have a secure channel for exchanging files, both for sending and receiving them. In both cases, files pass through security filters that are far more advanced than those used in traditional email.
Tranxfer helps secure the sending and receiving of documents. It scans all incoming documents with antivirus software and analyzes outgoing files using a DLP module to prevent data leaks.
