Every second more than 2 million emails are sent around the world. Often with important files, documents and letters attached. These attachments reach inboxes through few security controls, and hackers often use them as a gateway to companies' corporate systems. With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), questions arise about the transmission of data in this way and the risk that this may pose to your company's duty to protect personal data, both of your clients and of your workers.
uncontrollable attachments
The moment you hit "Send" on an email, you lose control of it and everything attached to it, forever. Documents can be downloaded, copied, shared, and re-downloaded over and over again, which is an even bigger problem if the communication lands in the wrong inbox. The document goes from being on one device to being on at least two devices, and the inboxes of both the sender and the recipients.
Security, or lack thereof...
It is undeniable that emails are not secure enough to include sensitive and possibly confidential information in their attachments. They are vulnerable and you could incur liability for non-compliance with the GDPR. Currently, more than 80% of the volume of cyberattacks use email attachments as a means of attack.
Have you recieved my email?
It is common to send an email and not know if you have received it, if you have opened it, or if it has gone directly to the spam or trash folders. It's not always possible to know if your email has been opened, if the attachment has been viewed, and who has received it. If what you send is important and needs to be seen, it is vital that you know if and when it has been opened. Getting the wrong recipient, or the wrong attachment, are the most common causes when it comes to security breaches.
Employees look for workarounds for large files
Email attachments have a space limit, and if the file is larger than the limit, it cannot be sent. This can be easily avoided if you know the size limit of your company's server, but it's quite possible that the recipient of your email has a much lower limit and won't know that your important document has been blocked by their automated systems.
The alternative to sending attachments by email
It is true that sending the attached documents by email is easy. It is just as easy for cybercriminals, who can send massive emails with malicious files, hoping that an employee will click on it.
It is increasingly important for companies to have a secure channel for exchanging files, both for sending and receiving them. In both cases, they go through much more advanced security filters than traditional mail.
Tranxfer helps secure the sending and receiving of documentation. It scans all incoming documents using an antivirus, and analyzes outgoing ones using a DLP module to prevent information leaks.
