What To Do If Your G Suite Email Gets Hacked

Many of my cus­tomers use Google Apps (now known as G Suite) for their busi­ness email, cal­en­dar and stor­age space. G Suite is a pret­ty secure plat­form for paid users. How­ev­er, many times, G Suite users do not take the prop­er steps to make sure their data is extra secure. Over the past few years, I have received more and more noti­fi­ca­tions from cus­tomers that their email sys­tem was hacked. Below are a few easy-to- fol­low tips to make sure your orga­ni­za­tion’s email (on Google) is pro­tect­ed against hacks. Obvi­ous­ly noth­ing online is 100% secure, but fol­low­ing some of these tips below will real­ly help avoid or mit­i­gate an attack. [cap­tion id=“attachment_3260” align=“alignright” width=“300”] Hacked Email Exam­ple in Gmail[/caption]

Tip #1 Stronger Pass­words for Your Staff

Try not to use pass­words that are easy to remem­ber. Google will tell you if your pass­word is weak, fair, good or strong. A weak or fair pass­word today is going to be some­thing like, ​“m@cGeek01” or ​“Ch@rger$Fan1.” The stronger pass­words will be like this: ​“RruFs9TA6HjGJT.” Those are a roy­al pain, I know! In order for me to keep track of email pass­words like that, I use a pass­word ​“vault” to help remem­ber these things. Check out: 1Password or Call­pod Keep­er.

Tip #2: Turn On & Require Two-Step Authen­ti­ca­tion for Everyone

Two-Step Authen­ti­ca­tion is a pret­ty stan­dard prac­tice these days. Finan­cial insti­tu­tions such as banks, invest­ment firms and cred­it card com­pa­nies have been using two-step secu­ri­ty for years. If you are unfa­mil­iar with what it is or what it looks like, here is a quick exam­ple. When you go to a site to pur­chase stocks or check out your finan­cial port­fo­lio, chances are two-step authen­ti­ca­tion is turned on. When you type in your user­name, you’ll nor­mal­ly get a text mes­sage or phone call with a 6 to 8 dig­it unique pass­code. This pass­code nor­mal­ly expires in a few min­utes. This helps keep hack­ers out, because they would need access to your mobile device to get that unique pass­code. Click on the links to learn more about two-step for Google Two Step or to see the steps to turn this fea­ture on. If you are man­ag­ing the com­pa­ny’s G Suite account, make sure you make this step manda­to­ry for all users. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant if you are using Google Dri­ve to store your impor­tant com­pa­ny files. You don’t want a sin­gle employ­ee with this fea­ture turned off and a weak pass­word to be the ​“in” for a hack­er and poten­tial­ly expose your files.

Tip #3: Chang­ing of Pass­words and Check­ing Email For­ward­ing Features

This last tip applies if you already were hacked or you think you might have been hacked. Two quick things to do (besides fol­low­ing the tips above: turn­ing on 2‑Step) is to 1) Change your pass­word and 2) Check your email for­ward­ing fea­tures. Make sure the hack­er did not set­up an email for­ward­ing address. Some­times a hack­er can be tricky by for­ward­ing emails to their account. This will go unde­tect­ed most of the time.

G Suites: OK to Use or Not OK?

One final com­ment about this sub­ject. When your account gets hacked, it is nor­mal to have doubts about the online account you are using. If your Gmail is hacked, you might think, ​“Oh maybe I should be using Microsoft instead?” If you are using Drop­box for file stor­age and get hacked, you might think it is time to look for anoth­er plat­form. Don’t let hack­ers win! Those creeps are always look­ing for ways to access accounts. All online suites or cloud soft­ware are not hack­er proof. Just about every­thing cre­at­ed today has lim­its and is poten­tial­ly vul­ner­a­ble. Remem­ber, back in the day before com­put­er hack­ing was a nor­mal thing, we had to pro­tect our data from phys­i­cal thieves, fire or acts of God.  So don’t pan­ic! Take these steps NOW to help pro­tect your com­pa­ny’s email and file sys­tem! If you get stuck or have a ques­tion, let me know.