Organizations, therefore, need to carry out email risk assessment and deploy enterprise email encryption that secures all outgoing and incoming email communication. This leaves email messages, including their content and attachments, open to being intercepted, read, and stolen as they are transmitted from the sender to the recipient, which becomes even more critical when users share sensitive information via unencrypted email.įurthermore, a hacker can infect a user’s machine with malware, enabling them to intercept future messages and exfiltrate further sensitive information from corporate networks.
Protocols like TLS do not typically protect email by default, which means messages can be transmitted in plaintext if email encryption is not applied.
These email encryption solutions will either be hosted privately by the organization or, increasingly frequently, a cloud-based service through an email encryption software vendor. Instead, they can now access web-based interfaces that decrypt and read encrypted messages.
Other email encryption solutions may focus on protecting the device rather than the email gateway, which targets potential security threats on local networks.īut there is increasingly no requirement for users to install email encryption services on their devices. This service can use policy-based encryption to protect specific email messages or enable users to choose which emails to encrypt, or a combination of both. Some email encryption software will be in the form of a client installed on users’ computers, laptops, or mobile devices. For example, organizations will typically specify that any email message containing personally identifiable information (PII), financial data, or other sensitive information sent by any user be encrypted. This enables organizations to implement policies that define which emails need to be encrypted and in what circumstances messages should be encrypted. This process ensures email security and guarantees only the intended recipient can open the email.Įmail encryption solutions do not typically follow a standard architecture but rely on gateway software that enables the enforcement of policy-based encryption. Popular free-to-use email services typically do not provide end-to-end encryption, which means hackers can easily intercept sent messages.Įmail encryption solutions use public-key cryptography and digital signature mechanisms to encrypt email messages. Hackers use email to target victims and steal data, such as personal information like names, addresses, and login credentials, then commit crimes like identity theft or identity fraud. Furthermore, most sent emails are encrypted while the data is transmitted, but the information is stored in clear text, making the content readable by email providers. It scrambles the original sent message and converts it into an unreadable or undecipherable format. Email encryption is necessary when sharing sensitive information via email. Email encryption is an authentication process that prevents messages from being read by an unintended or unauthorized individual.