Business email is work. Personal email is personal.
Let’s keep it that way.
Don’t Use Business Email for Personal Activities
Many people know that using a personal email account for business correspondence is a bad idea (we’ll talk about this later). Yet they see nothing wrong with using a business email address to register on social networks, online services, and other non-work resources. It’s handy, after all, to receive all work and personal messages in one mailbox.
The first consideration that should stop an employee/business from using a business email account for personal matters is security.
- It makes profiling easier
Using a business address for nonbusiness purposes makes it easier for attackers to profile you. - It facilitates spear-phishing
Cybercriminals choose tricks they think will best ensnare their victims. If they know you use your business email for other things, they know you are more likely to fall for a phishing email. - It provides criminals with a smokescreen
When hackers use brute-force attacks on your social network and other personal accounts, your inbox will quickly fill with warnings and alerts. - More mass phishing and malware in the inbox
The more resources you tie to your business email account, the more potential threats you’ll have in your inbox. - The eyes glaze over
With greater variety – nonwork emails among business messages – dangerous items become harder to spot.
Know the Common Red Flags for Emails >>
Why We Fall for Phishing Scams so Easily >>
Don’t Use Personal Email for Work
We said we’d talk about it later…It’s later.
Using a personal email account for business correspondence is a bad idea. Using your personal email (example: [email protected]) as your work email has the same risk that using your work email for personal activities does. Take a moment to re-read the above security concerns with this new perspective.
Additionally, personal email accounts for business purposes are not their intended purpose. Using free Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and other individual email accounts add unnecessary risk to you and your employees. Side note: There may be exceptions, but they are few and far between.
The benefits of a professionally hosted email: Contact us to discuss your options
- Security & Features
- Control
- Onboarding/offboarding employees with ease
- Accountability and monitoring
- Easier IT management and oversight
- Features and Add-Ons
- Backup and recovery capabilities
- Access/permissions restrictions on a user level
- Ability to utilize email filtering, spam alerts, and more
- Team Collaboration
- Using distribution lists and/or shared mailboxes
- Setting up email rules and forwarding on a user and business level
- Control
- Branding & Professionalism
- Confidence – Being unified with your email hosting/naming gives your clients confidence and reassurance. It is important to remain consistent with your brand.
- Email Red Flags – Employees are trained to be diligent with their email habits; taught to know the signs of a phishing or hacked email account. When you choose to use a personal/free email account, you are at risk that your emails will not be delivered.
- Example – a financial institution emailing from Gmail is an automatic red flag
- Example – a subject line with “Bank/Employment Verification” coming from Yahoo is an automatic red flag
All in all – it comes down to this: work email needs to be on a corporate platform and limited to work use only. Personal email needs to stay personal.