Today we all use either texting or emails far more than we use letter writing to communicate with our friends and relatives. In business the use of email is ubiquitous, and seems to grow exponentially each year. Sooner or later someone in the company raises the question regarding the amount of confidential or business sensitive information collectively the organization is sending and possibly receiving by email. Is this information secure and should we just casually be sending it via this medium? Before email we either sent our correspondence by post in an envelope or byway of fax. Intercepting these methods of communication was and is both easy to detect or in the case of fax almost impossible to achieve.
Email on the other hand is much more easily subverted and not so easy to detect if and when it has been. This is when the idea to encrypt your company email will be discussed and considered. You can think of encrypting email as akin to putting your letter in a registered envelope, it can’t be read as it travels to the recipient and only the bona fide recipient will actually receive it. Sounds like a great idea a virtual no brainer! But now we have to consider how will the intended recipient be able to decrypt the encrypted content? An issue that is by no means a trivial concern and one that can lead to the whole system falling into disuse because it is not easy to administer and for the user not easy to use. Any system that is put in place to increase security, if it relies on the user changing their normal business practices, is doomed to fail.
What is required is a system that follows the companies predetermined rules and guidelines and in the case of encrypted email means that if external email is to be sent encrypted the system will carryout this task automatically, using an encryption key that the system will know the intended recipient has the necessary key pair to enable decryption.
This seems to dictate that we need a system capable of generating key pairs used to encrypt and decrypt emails and then distributing these key pairs and managing them from that point forward. Hopefully all of this will be done seamlessly in the background without the need for user interaction. Is this possible? The answer to this question is yes it is, with varying levels of complexity. Do not confuse complexity in this case with increased levels of security. The system does not need to be super complex to be super secure!
To this point I have not even considered the question of how secure is my encryption system. Here is not the place to discuss this at length but suffice to say that items to be considered when looking at any file encryption or large file transfer software include; how is the entropy generated that produces the key pair, is key management automated and scalable, has the system been independently assessed. These are by no means the complete list of considerations but they will at least provide you with a good basis on which to continue your evaluation of possible candidates for a solution to encrypting your email correspondence simply and by a means that will cause your business partners the least level of hassle.
For more information about email encryption and large file transfers you may find the following links useful:
Egress Secure Email -http://www.egress.com/solutions-secure-email/
Egress File Encryption & Large File Transfer -http://www.egress.com/solutions-large-file-transfer/
Wikipedia -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_encryption
Email on the other hand is much more easily subverted and not so easy to detect if and when it has been. This is when the idea to encrypt your company email will be discussed and considered. You can think of encrypting email as akin to putting your letter in a registered envelope, it can’t be read as it travels to the recipient and only the bona fide recipient will actually receive it. Sounds like a great idea a virtual no brainer! But now we have to consider how will the intended recipient be able to decrypt the encrypted content? An issue that is by no means a trivial concern and one that can lead to the whole system falling into disuse because it is not easy to administer and for the user not easy to use. Any system that is put in place to increase security, if it relies on the user changing their normal business practices, is doomed to fail.
What is required is a system that follows the companies predetermined rules and guidelines and in the case of encrypted email means that if external email is to be sent encrypted the system will carryout this task automatically, using an encryption key that the system will know the intended recipient has the necessary key pair to enable decryption.
This seems to dictate that we need a system capable of generating key pairs used to encrypt and decrypt emails and then distributing these key pairs and managing them from that point forward. Hopefully all of this will be done seamlessly in the background without the need for user interaction. Is this possible? The answer to this question is yes it is, with varying levels of complexity. Do not confuse complexity in this case with increased levels of security. The system does not need to be super complex to be super secure!
To this point I have not even considered the question of how secure is my encryption system. Here is not the place to discuss this at length but suffice to say that items to be considered when looking at any file encryption or large file transfer software include; how is the entropy generated that produces the key pair, is key management automated and scalable, has the system been independently assessed. These are by no means the complete list of considerations but they will at least provide you with a good basis on which to continue your evaluation of possible candidates for a solution to encrypting your email correspondence simply and by a means that will cause your business partners the least level of hassle.
For more information about email encryption and large file transfers you may find the following links useful:
Egress Secure Email -http://www.egress.com/solutions-secure-email/
Egress File Encryption & Large File Transfer -http://www.egress.com/solutions-large-file-transfer/
Wikipedia -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_encryption