Many modern recruitment agencies have plenty of data online which needs to be readily available and most importantly secure from outsiders. The constant rise of cyber-attacks every year affects many companies around the world, statistics show that malware infections have grown from 165 million in 2013 to 812 million in 2018*1 and continue to rise till this day. The reason for this rise is clear, as many businesses like recruiters are moving their operations online as part of digital transformation, criminals are also shifting towards cyber-crime rather than physical crime which requires more effort and is higher risk. Of course, it makes sense to go digital in order to enhance your business but you must be prepared for the new dangers present in the digital world.
Cyber criminals are interested in stealing personal information and private data, a very common way of doing this is by email as 92% of malware is delivered by email*1. Unfortunately, recruiters, who hold data from many different clients including employers and candidates, are prime targets for hackers as they know the abundance of personal data you have that is constantly being shared between candidates and employers. A cyber breach for a recruitment company is detrimental and can have irreversible effects as reputations can be ruined. Ask yourself how your clients would feel if their personal data was leaked causing them financial losses and potentially endangering them.
Criminals target companies which rely heavily on online systems like recruiters, whether it be emails through Outlook (Office 365) or other online systems like iCIMS. I am sure you are regularly relying on these online systems and sadly those pesky cyber criminals will not hesitate to take advantage of that. It is reported that overall UK businesses are hit every 50 seconds*2, making recruitment agencies operation in the UK highly susceptible to attacks, as the industry grows the interest from these cyber criminals will also follow suit, especially for personal data being constantly shared through emails. Even if you are careful with the data you share through emails, all it takes is one accidental click of a link embedded in an innocent looking email to download malware onto your device and overtime gain access to all those private folders.
In 2018 Whitbread who control Premier Inns and Costa Coffee in the UK had a cyber security breach. This was a recruitment breach as PageUp, who manage Whitbread’s online recruitment portal, was compromised resulting in the contact and employment details of applicants getting leaked. Consequently, Whitbread ended up suspending the use of PageUp due to this breach*4, we believe every aspect of recruitment agencies need to be covered, especially their emails which are the weakest point for hackers to breach. Therefore, it is highly important a robust email protection system is in place. Our advanced X-Ray technology can efficiently filter the harmful emails from the genuine ones, so if you need email protection there is no better place to come to than Email Protection as we do exactly what it says on the tin.
CV attachment or malicious link?
We know recruiters need to go through many different attachments and documents whether it be desired criteria for candidates or CV’s and personal information from the candidates themselves, whatever it is you are opening we believe you have the right to feel safe when doing so and not have to worry about harmful emails compromising your business and ruining your reputation as a recruitment agency, unfortunately without a proper protection system in place you are exposed to a growing number of cyber criminals wanting to violate this right. Even though you make have already opened many emails and had no problems from doing so yet, all it takes is one well disguised link or one employee mistake to compromise your network.
By using Email Protection’s tools, you can have complete peace of mind when sharing data quickly between various clients. The Anti-Phishing technology we have ensures you are protected from Phishing emails trying to gain information from you by embedding harmful links inside attachments. Cyber criminals will often disguise the malicious links inside attachments which look like they have been sent by a genuine client, the technology we use contains advanced image recognition to validate URL’s. What’s unique about Email Protection is that we have dynamic detection and Anti-evasion tools which unpack the contents of links ensuring even the most hidden and evasive harmful software is dealt with to stop advanced attacks like APT’s and zero-day’s from causing any disturbances to your work.
Furthermore, the Email Protection dashboard can be made available to you to show just how much malicious or spam content is being sent your way and is being caught by our system. If you like to take a more active role in your own cyber security you can even see exactly from which email addresses these links are being sent from and which companies are being impersonated the most to attack you. If you don’t want to worry about the stats it’s no issue as we can keep you safe from those crippling recruitment scams and payroll fraud schemes directly targeted at you.
Dealing with timewasting spam
When going through your emails as a person in HR or recruitment it can already be a tedious task to find the perfect candidate for your client, you should not have to worry about getting your time wasted and email inbox clogged up by unwanted spam mail. Although spam filters may already be in place, we have noticed they are ineffective against a lot of spam mail and require you to actively monitor you mail and flag certain addresses as spam. Fear not as you no longer need to waste your time doing this once you start using Email Protection.
Our spam filter uses combined data of several market-leading technologies with anti-spam and reputation-based filtering to make sure you are not being bombarded with all that annoying spam mail. The average number of spam email in October 2020 was over 242 billion worldwide! *3 This is not ideal especially when you need read your emails to recruit the correct employees for your company or clients. By using Email Protection for your Outlook, you can have complete confidence that your inbox will be safe, well-maintained and monitored to be up to the standard you deserve, saving you from wasting time and potential financial or legal harms.
References
*1- https://purplesec.us/resources/cyber-security-statistics/
*2- https://www.apsco.org/article/biggest-cyber-security-threats-to-the-recruitment-sector-4147.aspx
*3 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270424/daily-spam-volume-global/
*4 – https://www.silicon.co.uk/security/cyberwar/whitbread-data-breach-234585