Designing an Email Security Awareness Program for State-Owned Enterprises in Namibia

Abstract

Emails offer easy and timely communication enabling businesses to connect to their stakeholders in real time. State-owned enterprises are no exception to this practice. Being a global enabler of communication, emails are a preferred medium for delivering malicious payload for hackers. Emails have well-known vulnerabilities such as malware, phishing, and spamming that can cripple and devastate an organization. Most attacks depend on the user performing some action such as clicking a link or sharing sensitive information making email security a human issue. Through their insecure behavior, employees can open doors for hackers into their organizational infrastructure. Change in behavior needs more than availing information on threats, risks, and unethical behaviors, and employees must be able to know or understand what is at risk and how to mitigate the email security risks. End-users/IT professionals must be motivated and willing to apply security practices/policies, and the latter requires a change of attitude and intentions. This qualitative exploratory research study presents results of an email security awareness study conducted with one state-owned enterprise in Namibia. Findings will be used to design an email security awareness program that will enhance the email security within the state-owned enterprise organizations and improve ICT awareness.