ISPs tighten up email defences – What do you need to do?

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have been developing and implementing defence tools of their very own, in a bid to keep email inboxes safe. However, these developments could cause some issues in the immediate term, as users or email providers lag behind the latest updates.

Email is one of the primary tools for hackers to harvest private, personal data – whether through directly accessing someone’s inbox using leaked passwords, or through phishing scams to get the individual themselves to hand over their details.

These issues are not new, and email providers have introduced improved security measures such as two-factor authentication and biometric login functionality on mobile devices to combat them.

However, the types of security improvements have varied from provider to provider, and so too their timescales for roll out. Now, to advance these much-needed security improvements, ISPs have taken matters into their own hands with security measures of their own.

Though the move has been welcomed by many IT experts and commentators, they have warned users to expect some snags as email providers fall in line with the ISP changes.

Outlook could be the biggest email provider to suffer issues, especially as its basic authentication protocol is still in the process of being removed. Here, users may experience difficulty logging into their inboxes using their old apps and credentials.

If you’re experiencing trouble, try the web version of Outlook instead – as this is likely to be using newer security measures than an app which may not comply with the latest ISP update.

Even if you’re not having trouble logging in, you could still take proactive measures to ensure you’re working with the latest security improvements. Writing for computerworld.com as The Microsoft Patch Lady, Susan Bradley explained: “Always check whether removing your email account and setting it up again fresh is enough to get your client to kick off stronger authentication processes.”

She added that users doing this shouldn’t see a loss of data, provided the account is already in iMAP format.