We\’ve just witness a confession of a spy from NSA that have access to most major web services such as gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
Apart from being exposed to hacking, eavesdropping, identity theft, and many more attacks, we need to be proactive to ensure our own security, clients and vendors to be improved at all times to minimise the success rate of any attacks.
We can still use public email if the content is not important or just casual messages.
Why leave it to chance?
If we are working on a next \”Big Thing\”, which contains trade secrets, we should not be using those services, instead using private email servers and also ensuring each computer / devices to be hardened and to use encryption for our communications.
A good reference on hardening computers / devices:
https://wikis.utexas.edu/display/ISO/Handheld+Hardening+Checklists
Start with some simple education: How to use email with encryption?
To start strengthening our internal network – first, obtain a digital certificate for your computer and mobile devices. Then you can install this certificate and use it to sign and encrypt your work.
You can setup a password to use this digital cert to prevent others from copying your cert file and gain unauthorized access.
References: