A 2024 report from Egress recently highlighted business email security as an ongoing issue, with 94% of global organisations falling victim to email phishing attacks.

With almost all (92%) of IT decision makers citing email security as their main concern, according to an Exclaimer study, in this article, Carol Howley, Chief Marketing Officer at leading email signature management platform Exclaimer, discusses the preventative measures businesses should take to minimise security risks associated with email signatures being misused by phishing scams.

What are email signature risks?

Email signatures can introduce security vulnerabilities that increase the risk of cyberattacks like phishing, malware distribution, and data breaches.

Phishing simulations commonly involve mimicking legitimate email signatures to assess employee vulnerability, targeting weak or misconfigured signatures. Cybercriminals send deceptive emails that appear to originate from trusted sources, often containing harmful links or attachments that can endanger the security of the recipient’s system.

As a result, organisations need to use analytical tools capable of detecting even the smallest variations from known signature patterns. This highlights the essential importance of continuously monitoring and updating security protocols to keep pace with evolving cyber threats.

What are the main consequences for businesses?

There are multiple consequences for business when subject to an email phishing attack

If a business falls victim to an email phishing attack, attackers can exploit exposed information for various malicious activities, exploiting vulnerabilities and causing harm to individuals and organisations.

Hackers often launch emails that appear to be from a legitimate source which often includes a malicious link. If opened, this malware could steal your login credentials which gives the hacker access to your email account.”

With access to your email login, hackers can cause havoc. One way is by tampering with your signature settings to include malicious content such as fake links. Another is by altering your contact information in the signature to impersonate you, and in other cases they can access sensitive information such as contact numbers or internal department addresses.”

“Privacy attacks resulting from information leakage through email signatures can have consequences ranging from the disclosure of confidential information, data breaches and unauthorised access to personal data, financial fraud and damage to brand reputation.”

“Your email signature itself isn’t a direct vulnerability for cyberattacks, but it can be a tool used in phishing attempts.”

Three steps to safeguarding your email signature from cyberattacks

1. Minimise personal information:

“Keep your email signatures professional and essential. Only include contact information like your name, title, company, work phone number, and company website in your email signatures and avoid including sensitive details like home addresses and personal mobile numbers. Less information in your signature makes it harder for attackers to exploit, reducing the risk of sensitive data breaches. If they gain access to your email account, there’s less personal data they can inject into a forged signature to trick recipients into phishing scams.”

2. Enforce strict email signature policies:

“Establish and enforce strict policies and guidelines for creating and managing email signatures to minimise the inclusion of unnecessary or sensitive information. This can include restrictions on embedding clickable links directly in the signature, which discourages a common phishing tactic where deceptive links are disguised to look like the company website or other trusted sources.”

3. Use a centralised management service or platform:

“A centralised management service can help businesses manage and distribute signatures to ensure consistency. Having a central template for all signatures prevents modification of signatures with malicious content, whilst also reducing the risk of employee errors. Access to editing the signature template is typically limited to IT personnel or administrators, so by controlling the email template and limiting access to editing, the risk of malicious content being inserted is minimised.”

Additional Advice

Regularly updating security protocols is essential as cyber threats evolve rapidly. Staying current with the latest security updates helps protect against new vulnerabilities. Deploying advanced anti-phishing solutions is also important. These tools can detect and block phishing attempts, identifying suspicious emails and preventing them from reaching your inbox.

Employee education is another critical component of email security. Conduct regular training sessions to help employees recognize phishing attempts and practise safe email habits. Alongside this, always verify sender information by checking the email address and domain for any discrepancies that might indicate spoofing.

To summarise

Securing email signatures is crucial in protecting a company’s data and subsequently maintaining reputation. By monitoring and implementing security measures like encryption as well as improving the design of your email signatures and improving awareness of what to include in an email signature, phishing risks can be significantly reduced.

Ultimately, in order to protect sensitive data and maintain confidence in digital communications, organisations need to be proactive in updating their security procedures to counteract changing threats.