Email Security Best Practices: How to Protect Your Organization from Evolving Threats

Email remains one of the most widely used communication tools in business, and unfortunately, it’s also highly targeted. With email-based attacks surging and hybrid work expanding the attack surface, organizations must adopt a proactive and layered approach to email security.

Here are Forcepoint’s top email security best practices to help safeguard sensitive data, prevent breaches and ensure compliance.

Prioritize Employee Training and Awareness

Human error is a leading cause of email-related breaches. Educating employees on how to spot phishing attempts, suspicious links and spoofed senders is critical. With the rise of AI-generated threats, regular training helps users stay alert to increasingly sophisticated scams.

Enforce Strong Passphrases and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Simple passwords aren't enough. Encourage employees to use complex passphrases and update them regularly. Adding MFA, such as text verification or authenticator apps, creates a second layer of defense against unauthorized access.

Implement Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Email

Forcepoint DLP for Email helps organizations apply industry-leading data security to emails, and it provides agentless control over outbound emails and prevents exfiltration where it's needed most.

A few more features of Forcepoint DLP for Email include:

• Manage policies from one dashboard
• Effortlessly integrate with Microsoft and Gmail
• Maintain data sovereignty and integrity
• Continuous uptime for your most active channel

Separate Business and Personal Email Use

Mixing personal and work email increases the risk of data leakage and social engineering attacks. Organizations should enforce clear policies that prohibit using personal accounts for business communications.

Think Before You Click

Phishing emails often use urgency or familiarity to trick users into clicking malicious links or downloading infected attachments. Encourage employees to verify sender identities and consult IT before engaging with suspicious content.

Configure Cloud Email Policies Effectively

With Forcepoint DLP for Email organizations can configure and deploy policies from a single user interface across email, web, cloud and endpoint.

Enable Email Authentication Standards

Implement SPF, DKIM and DMARC to verify sender authenticity and prevent domain spoofing.

Validate Recipients and Synchronize Directories

Ensure emails are only delivered to active users by enabling recipient validation through directory synchronization. This reduces the risk of misdirected messages and helps maintain clean mail flows.

Explore Forcepoint DLP for Email

Email security is a shared responsibility across IT, security teams and employees. By following these email security best practices and leveraging Forcepoint’s advanced solutions, organizations can reduce risk, protect sensitive data and stay ahead of evolving threats.

Learn more about Forcepoint DLP for Email today.