Well-planned email usage and marketing are critical for multiple organizations’ daily operations and growth, including dental clinics. Dental practices have to use their emails to send promotional messages to their existing patients, generate new leads, connect with their patients and employees, and build a positive reputation. So, dental practices need to keep their email secure using innovative tools, following email security practices, and to hire a top-rated dental IT service.

This blog discusses the top email security practices that can enhance the cybersecurity of dental clinics.

Train Employees Regularly on Email Cybersecurity Risks

One of the top practices for email security in dental clinics is training employees regularly through sessions. Cybercriminals regularly develop new email and spear phishing methods to target dental clinics. So dental practices need to hire dental IT services that train their employees at least once a year, informing them about any new techniques that cybercriminals use to target their emails.

Additionally, these managed IT services for dentists also discuss security practices that employees can use to keep their emails secure. Every team member at a dental facility needs to receive that training. If even one email account is compromised, it can jeopardize the operations and data of a dental clinic.

Create Stronger Passwords for Your Corporate Emails

This might seem like a very basic tip but creating stronger passwords is the key to optimal email security. All staff at a dental facility needs to create the strongest possible passwords for their corporate emails. But this doesn’t mean that dental supervisors should force their employees to come up with complex passwords, like ‘@!%$$*$^&,’ which is just a bunch of symbols.

It’s highly challenging for any employee to remember these kinds of passwords, and they would have to write the passwords somewhere, which damages the purpose of email security. Instead, the Cybersecurity specialists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommend creating longer passwords.

Dental IT services suggest making passwords like ‘ILoVeDoGsThEMoST,’ which are easier to remember. Additionally, it would take around 6 trillion years for a computer to crack a passphrase, which is a string of words, including capital and small letters.

Two dental practitioners checking their email on a laptop

Change Email Passwords Regularly

Besides creating stronger passwords, dental practices need to encourage their employees to change their email passwords regularly. At first glance, this might seem very simple, but changing a password requires detailed planning and training. Some dental clinics force their employees to change their passwords after every 3 months, which can result in employees getting frustrated and creating weaker passwords or passwords that are almost similar to the last ones.

So dental facilities need to discuss the importance of changing passwords regularly while creating unique passwords with their employees. But if this method isn’t working, dental clinics need to increase the interval between changing passwords to 6 months or 1 year, as creating weaker passwords will only put your dental clinic’s cybersecurity at risk.

The mail app on the screen

Use Multi-Factor Authentication Alongside

Using strong passwords isn’t enough for email security anymore, as cybercriminals are getting better at guessing and cracking passwords. So dental IT services recommend implementing multi-factor authentication for accessing emails. Through multi-factor authentication, users would have to confirm their identity using a second method every time they log in to their emails.

This second method can be a one-time code, or password users receive on their phones, a security question, or even biometric verification. This extra wall of security defends your dental clinic’s emails from attacks like brute force and password guessing. If you use multi-factor authentication, a cybercriminal won’t be able to access your email even if they know your password, which strengthens your email security to a whole new level.

Be Vary of Phishing Scams

According to a survey conducted by Statista, phishing is the most common cybercrime worldwide. Around 324 thousand organizations and individuals were the victims of phishing attacks in 2021, and the numbers are constantly increasing. So services providing IT support for dentists agree that phishing attacks are a huge threat to dental clinics.

Even though the standard protocols and protections of your email account might prevent several scam emails from reaching you, some phishing emails are extra-realistic and detailed, which prevents them from being blocked by email security algorithms. Therefore, dental clinics need to emphasize the risk of phishing in their employee cybersecurity training sessions.

Ask your team members to refrain from opening or replying to emails that look fishy. Additionally, you can hire an IT security service for dental practices to administer your emails, letting them filter spear phishing emails.