Top 5 Practices That You Can Use to Secure Microsoft Outlook

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Today, security is a big concern in an organization to prevent sensitive data leakage. In Outlook you can secure your Outlook items (emails, calendars, contacts and other stuff) using various techniques like by marking item as private, or you can put password in an entire personal folder (PST). Addionally, you can use a digital signature and digital certificate to achieve more security. In this article we will see some common practices that you can apply to secure your data in Outlook.

1.Mark Item as Private
When you create items, such as emails, calendars, journals and tasks, you can mark them as private. This practice will secure your item while sharing a folder with others (since the privately marked items don’t show up to other people while sharing). 
Read More on How to mark item as Private/Sensitive: https://support.office.com/en-nz/article/Mark-an-email-message-as-important-private-or-sensitive-f480dcea-59a9-48da-b7ed-3b3e0ab27a62​

2.Send Secure Encrypted Messages in Outlook
You can encrypt either an individual or all outgoing messages/mails in Outlook. Encryption means changing the plaintext into cyphertext which cannot be intercept in between. For sending a encrypted message in outlook you and the recipient must share Digital ID first and then only you can send or receive an encrypted message. Read More on How to Send Encrypted Message: https://support.office.com/en-sg/article/Encrypt-email-messages-373339cb-bf1a-4509-b296-802a39d801dc​
3.Sign into your Outlook from only trustworthy system
Unless it is required please don’t sign in to your Outlook account from a non-trustworthy system. Using Keylogger and other hacking techniques can cause the exposure of your login credentials.

4.Check the URL to avoid Phishing sites
A phishing site is designed to steal your login id and password. The look of a phishing website is similar to the authentic site but has a slight change in URL. So, make sure to double check the URL before signing in to any website. See How to Recognize a Phishing Website: https://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-symptoms.aspx

5.Create a Strong Password and don’t share it
Choose a strong password that is not easy to guess or to be solved by a dictionary attack (used by hacker to guess the password). Do not share your password with someone else in any case. See this link: http://hackyogi.com/how-to-choose-a-strong-password/
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