Identity theft and data breaches are on the rise with Fraudscape[1] stating in its 2019 report that identity theft hit an all-time high of more than 174,000 cases in 2017 in the UK alone.  Locally the figures are just as grim with TransUnion[2] research revealing that 49% of South African consumers have either been a victim of ID theft, or know someone who has. As identity theft is a growing concern for consumers, they are encouraged to take precautions to prevent falling victim to cybercrime and identity theft. The Banking Association of South Africa[3] has provided customers with several tips on preventing identity theft, including not disclosing personal information to anyone without knowing who you are disclosing the information to and what it is being used for.

While customers may be taking precautions to safeguard their personal information and verify the companies they provide personal information to, they are entrusting organisations with their details and expect them to have measures in place to ensure that their data remains secure. However, according to the World Wide Worx State of Enterprise Security in South Africa 2019 study that was conducted in association with Trend Micro and VMware, only 35% of South African IT decision-makers were prepared for cyberattacks at any time in the next 48 hours. Companies need to take action and have processes in place that not only protect their customer’s details but also provide their customers with tools to help prevent them from falling for phishing scams or spoofing emails for example.

EMAIL VERIFICATION TOOLS

Email spoofing occurs when recipients receive emails that resemble official organisation emails. For example, a client may receive an email that appears to be sent from his bank with the corporate logo and similar distinct graphics that have been sourced online or copied from legitimate emails sent from the organisation previously. These images are embedded into spoof emails to convince recipients that the emails are legitimate and encourage them to follow specific phishing instructions for example.

However, email spoofs are not only sent to customers, there are instances where emails appear to be sent from internal sources to company departments and employees with particular instructions. These include instructions that request immediate payment of funds or for funds to be released or even requesting particular customer details. Without the necessary verification tools in place, these emails are often actioned with immediate effect.

With approximately 93 percent of malware coming from emails[4], it is evident that companies lack mechanisms for email authentication. These emails often look legitimate at quick glance and as such the recipient is likely to action it as per the instructions included. To overcome this, company email signatures should aid in enhancing security. This could include providing recipients with a verification page that provides additional information about senders, qualifications, titles, and details about the company.

The details included on the verification should be approved by various departments within the organisation to ensure that the job title and qualification for example, are accurate. In addition as email correspondence can constitute a legal document, the organisation should put measures in place to ensure that all emails that leave the company authenticate the identity of the sender on behalf of the organisation.

By adopting these security measures, companies would provide added peace of mind to their customers that emails they receive from the organisation are authentic.

SECURING COMPANY TEMPLATES 

Looking beyond email signatures, companies need to put measures in place to secure company documents and templates from third parties. This includes removing former employees from systems and limiting the access vendors and other external parties have to company documents. For example, if important documents such as company letterheads are easily accessed via an unsecure platform, anyone could use the document to spoof recipients into providing valuable personal data or releasing funds.

For added security, company documents and templates should be housed centrally on a cloud platform that restricts usage to only those departments and individuals that need access to these documents. In addition employees should not be able to save company documents to their desktops for future use as these can be easily tampered with or shared with employees that do not need access to them.

Companies should incorporate a tracking system that provides line of site of who is accessing documents and when, as well as providing executives with statistics of user template compliance at any point in time.

This is supported by Varonis which states that fewer people should be able to access to sensitive company information as some of the biggest data breaches in the past year stem from a user who had access to files they shouldn’t have been able to see in the first place[5]. In addition they found that on average, only 3% of company folders are secured leaving employees open access to the majority of company documents and customer information.

PROTECTION FROM THE INSIDE OUT 

In many instances, companies have invested significantly into improving IT security with firewalls and antivirus and antimalware software, however, internal security measures have fallen through the cracks.

In some instances companies rely on third party organisations for email branding to be applied in the form of banners and email signatures which are applied after the email has been sent from the sender. By intercepting these emails, the emails are effectively tampered with and could put customer data at risk. It also poses questions about email authenticity which is key to establishing trust with customers.

Identity theft can occur by neglecting to cancel former employee access to documents. When employees leave an organisation, their access to company documents and systems should be removed from the system immediately and any storage of documentation on the workstation should immediately be flushed. According to Varonis 34% of company user accounts are stale but enabled and 64% of user accounts are stale or inactive. This opens up additional opportunities for identity theft and gives hackers access to useful information that could go easily unnoticed for an extended period of time. As stated by Varonis, “if you’ve got outdated users with active accounts, it’s like handing over a new set of papers to your hacker.”

Giving employees’ access to locked content that cannot be tampered with, provides additional security for customers. This practice reduces the risk of employees and third parties from altering the content and minimises the possibility of intentional and unintentional sabotage from employees. It also adds a layer of authenticity to the email, giving recipients added peace of mind that the content is authentic.

PUTTING THE BASICS IN PLACE 

While protecting customer and company data is a huge task, most companies have already started putting measures in place to minimise the risk of data breaches and identity theft. However, in order to provide holistic protection, they need to pay attention to basic requirements that can go a long way to adding a layer of protection to both the company and its customers.

Companies would benefit from building compliance standards into company documentation and emails, adding additional verification measures into emails and limiting access to specific documentation can all go a long way to helping to minimise threats and taking security to a higher level.

BrandQuantum develops software solutions to help companies deliver compliant customer communications and documents. The tamperproof email signatures that are sent out with every single email via Microsoft Outlook have built in verification tools to give customers added peace of mind that your company emails are authentic. The BrandOffice solution offers permission control to company documents so that only those employees that need access to your documents have it. In addition access to company documentation and templates is tracked and audited to give companies line of site of document usage and overall documentation compliance. For more information about BrandQuantum and our brand consistency software solutions, please visit our website www.brandquantum.com. 

[1] Identity Theft and Cyber-Fraud in the UK Hit All-time High | 2019-06-18 | Security Magazine

[2] Your Identity Can Be Stolen | TransUnion

[3] The Banking Association South Africa

[4] 134 Cybersecurity Statistics and Trends for 2021 | Varonis

[5] 2018 Global Data Risk Report | Varonis

Would you let your employees send out personal letters on the company letterhead? Would you send out company letters on unbranded documents? Have you thought about the risks of allowing employees to send out emails without the correct company branding?

We’ve all received emails that were typed up in comic sans, have a hand holding a feather quill as part of the email signature and end with a motivational quote or bible verse. Often employees within organisations treat email as their own personal space, but it is an important business tool that provides an opportunity to build brand trust with your customers. Particularly as email continues to be the most widely used communication tool for businesses.

While employees aren’t consistently trying to damage the brand, these emails do dilute the brand and even cause reputational damage to the organisation. The key to establishing a brand and building trust is consistency. In the case of emails, it is critical that every email sent from the organisation aligns to the brand. This means the font type, font colour, tone, logo, branding and email signature should be consistent across the organisation.

When used correctly, emails can help to build a company’s brand amongst its employees, customers and potential customers. To achieve this, all emails sent to both internal and external audiences should meet the criteria listed below. It’s important to remember that all internal emails can be sent to external audiences and should follow the correct branding standards too.

Email signatures: A standard email signature design should be used across the entire organisation and include visual elements such as the logo but also the organisation’s primary fonts as this sets the email apart from other brands and becomes a marketing tool. These signatures should be consistent across the organisation but meet the requirements of different business units and regions. For example, the signature could include different contact numbers for different departments so that customers can contact the correct department to meet their specific needs.

Relevant information about the company and the sender, such as name, title, telephone numbers, website address, physical address and even social media details should also be easily available from within the email signature as this adds an additional layer of verification but also helps establish trust amongst recipients. Where someone writes on behalf of someone else, this should also be noted to further establish trust with the recipients.

Trust and credibility can also be gained and enhanced by ensuring there is a mechanism of verification for example including a click through from the email signature to a page which includes an image of the sender as well as their relevant experience. It is also important that these email signatures are tamperproof to prevent employees from changing job titles, for example, but should provide flexibility to make changes to signatures as necessary. HTML signatures are often used by businesses, however, they can present a security risk and also aren’t able to prevent employees from making changes to their details, which can present a risk to the organisation. Equally important is that email signatures display consistently across multiple devices and platforms to build trust with recipients.

Email disclaimers: Every email that is sent out should contain a disclaimer to protect the company from possible risks. To ensure this happens, disclaimers can be included as part of the email signature to protect the company from possible risks. Depending on the department within an organisation, there may a need to tailor the disclaimer to specific needs, for example, finance departments may require different disclaimers to legal departments. For global organisations, each jurisdiction would need to have a disclaimer that adheres to the legal requirements of the country. To prevent the email from getting too long, different email signatures can be used for new emails and reply emails, both of which should include the disclaimer.

Font type and colour: Every organisation uses a specific font for their emails which aligns to the brand. In many instances, larger organisations design their own fonts to ensure uniqueness and reinforce their brand in the market. The colour of the font is also very important as this is one of the most memorable components of a brand. The colour scheme used in emails is critical to establishing brand trust amongst your audience as it is one of the first things the recipient will recognise from your brand after the logo. When receiving emails, recipients will often notice the font and colour before they start to read the content. By keeping the font consistent in terms of type, colour and size, customers will quickly recognise that emails come from your organisation.

Email banners: A final visual element within emails is the email banner. These banners provide an opportunity to further build brand trust while informing the recipient about campaigns and promotions that could be of interest to them. Email banners should incorporate all the same branding elements of the email from font colour and type through to the logo used. They should also be quick and easy to edit so as to accommodate any changes to campaigns or promotions as well as to tailor the content according to particular customer needs. It is important to note that these banners can add value to the recipient but they can also annoy recipients if they are not relevant to them. As such banners should be used to get important information out to customers such as VAT changes or company changes and senders should have line of sight of what they are sending to their customers in an effort to avoid sending incorrect or irrelevant information out.

Email content: In addition to the visual elements of an email, email content should be written in a consistent brand voice and tone which aligns to the overall brand. This can be achieved by providing employees with pre-approved content but allowing them to personalise the email. This is particularly valuable for employees that have long standing relationships with their clients and want to ensure that they are providing the correct information without neglecting the personal touch.

As with the email content, the correct attachments should always be included with the emails, this means that documents are branded correctly and the content has been pre-approved and is accurate. Incorrect or outdated documents can be costly to the organisation, have possible legal implications and erode brand trust amongst customers.

Social media links: Social media links are often included onto email signatures for customers to find out more about the organisation and read about its latest news and developments. It is important that the social media links included on email signatures direct recipients to the corporate social media accounts rather than to employees own personal pages.

To build brand trust with your employees and customers, every single email sent from your organisation should have consistent branding. It will also ensure that both employees and customers get a consistent experience from all emails regardless of who sends it.

As fraudulent emails are of concern for many recipients, consistently branded emails give customers peace of mind that the emails sent from your company did, in fact, come from your organisation. Verification tools can help provide an extra layer of security and give your customers added peace of mind that the emails they receive from your organisation are authentic.

With companies using emails as a primary tool to communicate with their employees and customers, it is valuable to use them as an opportunity to build brand trust with your recipients. You can achieve this by using tools to help simplify the process and incorporate the branding from email inception to sending.

BrandMail, developed by BrandQuantum, is an email solution that helps companies to deliver consistent emails with beautifully designed, tamperproof email signatures that are sent out with every single email, both to internal and external recipients. The click-through verification via the BrandMe page provides additional peace of mind for recipients and helps establish brand trust with customers as they have a clear view of the sender.

With BrandMail, email content can be predeveloped and approved for easy inclusion and approved documents can be attached from within the Outlook ribbon. Banners can be changed and managed internally and viewed on the sender’s email to ensure that campaigns are tailored to specific recipients. For more information about BrandQuantum and our brand consistency software solutions, please visit our website www.brandquantum.com. 

Technology can be a key differentiator for companies, helping to improve efficiencies and streamline processes. This is particularly true for automation technology which is helping companies to remove repetitive tasks from employees so that they can focus on what they do best.

However, when considering these technologies, certain criteria should be checked before the company implements solutions. Key considerations should centre on compliance and security of the software. While this is true for every organisation, it holds additional weight within a legal environment.

IT consultant and technologist, Tony Trollip, provides a perspective on BrandQuantum’s software solutions: BrandOffice and BrandMail which were reviewed from a legal perspective.

CONSISTENT INFORMATION

When looking at email signatures across an organisation, there is value in using an email signature strategy that enforces a consistent signature across the organisation by drawing information from a single source.

From a law firm perspective, there is usually a culmination of pedigree details, degrees, accolades and designations that makes up a professional’s profile. This information is held in various systems internally including online professional memberships and corporate web page biographies. This information should be maintained within each system, however, kept consistent across platforms from a central mechanism. However, as various elements can change, such as designations, qualifications, surnames, titles etc., at any time, there is great value in leveraging this methodology which will create a single version of truth allowing the required details to enrich the email signature for example by updating the content at a single point before having this information update across various platforms.

With BrandMail, the email signature, which reflects across PC and mobile platforms, requires an update at a single source and once the user syncs, it automatically updates the business card, email signature and social profiles.

In addition to maintaining electronic persona of an individual, there exists a need whereby assistants such as legal secretaries, send emails on behalf of a professional, the signature needs to reflect this. In some cases, a single assistant could be sending on behalf of more than one professional. Maintaining the email signature centrally that recognises this relationship and amends the email appropriately is something BrandMail uniquely offers, provided the source system is maintained such as Human Resources (HR) records.

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT THE RECIPIENT GETS

Another key benefit of BrandMail is that all branding elements appear on the email at the onset of drafting the content. This includes the banner, email signature and disclaimer. This means that the sender can see the email as the recipient will see it on their end.

Other email branding solutions require the signature and banner be added after the sender has drafted and sent the email. This means the sender is not able to see the final email that was sent due to post sending modification that occurs to insert the signature and banner. This change can have serious legal implications as the email the sender sends is different from that that the recipient receives. In other words, the email has been modified between the sender and the recipient.

With BrandMailthe email signatures, disclaimers and banners are all included in the email during the drafting process, removing the need for post sender modification and providing assurance that the sender’s emails and the recipient’s emails are identical.

This has significant benefits from a compliance perspective as the email should look identical in the senders sent items to the version in the recipient’s inbox. If it does not, it raises possible questions about what was modified in transit. As such companies should be cognisant of the threat of possible modification to emails. When emails are sent with no system intervention, it means that the email is sanctified from beginning to end and it maintains its persona and appearance. This provides greater peace of mind for the sender and the company that emails have not been tampered with but are authentic.

AUTOMATED BRANDING WITH AN INDIVIDUAL TOUCH

While companies strive to instil corporate branding across all documents and collateral, within particular law firms, there is an opportunity for lawyers to work within brand guidelines but incorporate their personality within the framework. In this case, it is valuable to provide templates for the team to work with but that allow for modifications to be made according to each practitioner. The agreed brand would require that stationary maintain brand standards such as logo, font type and colour, but the practitioner has the freedom to craft their documents and contracts as necessary.

This means a central pool of marketing assets which extends to the signature, letterhead and webpage are all aligned in terms of the brand corporate identity, but practitioners are allowed to manipulate the content according to their specific needs. For example, the notes of the consultation would be transcribed into a legal document and as each consultation is unique, content would be unique to the discussion.

As lawyers focus primarily on practising their craft, the technology that they use needs to be intuitive at a macro level to automatically incorporate the branding and create the corporate identity so that they can focus on the task at hand.

BrandOffice and BrandMail provide intuitive technology within a seamless user interface that allows the path of least resistance, creates the perception of choice and delivers consistency across the organisation.

SECURE SOFTWARE

While there is a definitive line between marketing and IT, marketing departments are greatly dependent on IT departments to help address certain challenges and carry out specific functions. For example, securing customer information or delivering brand materials to employees and implementing consistent email signatures are often functions that marketing departments rely on the IT team to deliver. As such marketing challenges are becoming the technology department’s problem to solve.

This adds additional pressure to the IT department and leaves the marketing department dependent on IT to address their needs as and when they can get to them. With BrandQuantum’s solutions, the heavy dependency on IT is somewhat removed as marketing can implement changes and roll them out centrally without relying on the IT department.

As securing customer data is a key concern for companies, the fact that BrandQuantum’s solutions have been independently tested and align to European standards provides peace of mind that customer and employee data is secure.

The solutions have been designed with security upfront, making it easier to lockdown at a later stage. They also have been built with segmentation of risk to safeguard content. This means that content has not associations attached to it as security breach independent silos protect the data. Most systems have not been built in this level of security to protect employee and customer data.

According to Trollip, there are several benefits to BrandQuantum’s software. Within a legal framework, the software meets several compliance requirements, provides a solution that is met with least resistance as it is easy to use within a seamless user interface. The software has also been built to meet European security standards, providing users with peace of mind that customer data cannot fall into the wrong hands.

Overall the solution bridges the gap between marketing departments and technology departments, providing a platform that is easy to use and gives marketing departments more control of the information they need to share with the company.

BrandQuantum develops software solutions to help companies deliver consistent customer experiences in all customer engagements. From beautifully designed, tamperproof email signatures that are sent out with every single email via Microsoft Outlook, through to consistently branded letterheads, documents, presentations and spreadsheets that contain the correct branding all created from within the Microsoft Office suite. For more information about BrandQuantum and our brand consistency software solutions, please visit our website www.brandquantum.com

Insights provided by Tony Trollip, IT Consultant and Technologist.