Microsoft Office 365 has become a staple for many corporations, combining email, document sharing, and cloud hosting in a convenient, all-in-one suite. Its ease of deployment, with minimal setup required, makes it an appealing choice for administrators seeking a streamlined, out-of-the-box solution. However, Office 365’s popularity—with over 345 million paying users—also makes it a prime target for cybercriminals.

While Microsoft Office 365 includes built-in cybersecurity features like phishing protection, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) defenses, and data protection, these baseline measures can be insufficient against sophisticated threats. Administrators often deploy Office 365 with default settings, but integrated security measures can fall short, particularly with zero-day vulnerabilities that evade traditional defenses. While the standard security may block known threats, businesses soon realize that Office 365’s default protections may not fully shield against advanced attacks, necessitating additional layers of security for comprehensive protection.

Microsoft as a Target for Threats

In 2023, Microsoft announced that it had lost its access keys to a third-party state-sponsored advanced persistent threat. An advanced persistent threat (APT) is usually built specifically to target a specific organization and silently penetrate its system until sensitive data is taken. Small businesses are usually an easier target for cyber-criminals, but groups of hackers organize to build sophisticated threats to find vulnerabilities in large businesses. Microsoft lost their keys to these organized groups of cyber-criminals, and the keys gave them access to email accounts for any business using Office 365.

A survey of 27 million users across 600 enterprises found that 71.4% of Microsoft 365 business users suffer at least one compromised account each month.

Microsoft Office 365 has encryption for email, but losing private keys allows for eavesdropping and decryption of any traffic between an Office 365 customer and Microsoft’s servers. Microsoft revoked the keys as soon as the vulnerability was discovered, but it was too late for numerous organizations, including several US government agencies. Any eavesdropping of data or generation of access tokens would be invisible to their customers, so investigators do not know the impact of the vulnerability at the time of this writing.

Email systems weren’t the only environment compromised in the aftermath of stolen access keys. Customers with integrated Azure Active Directory services also faced a potential compromise. In the aftermath, cyber-criminals found email addresses linked to Azure accounts and attempted authentication into corporate environments. If successful, the cyber-criminals could install malware on the environment, change configurations to leave backdoors, or silently exfiltrate data from virtual machines and serverless applications.

Better Security with Layered Strategies

A good strategy for cybersecurity involves layers. Security layers avoid leaving a single point of failure, requiring attackers to bypass several defenses before accessing sensitive data. While using Microsoft Office 365 security systems is beneficial, it should not be the only form of email security in an organization’s strategy. 

TitanHQ email security and archiving solutions perfectly complement Microsoft 365 security. TitanSecure and EncryptTitan are two solutions that augment email security and encryption for organizations using an Office 365 integration and document-sharing environment.

Protect Sensitive Information and Send Secure Messages with EncryptTitan Email Encryption. 

End-to-end encryption using EncryptTitan adds another layer of security to the encryption in Office 365 products. It’s this additional layer that would need to be bypassed should Microsoft have another critical data breach in its internal systems.  With end-to-end encryption, email from a user is encrypted from the user’s device to the recipient. Recipients are given ways to access and decrypt email messages should they not have encryption and decryption support on their own internal email servers. Giving recipients options for ways to decrypt messages supports organizations that do not have Office 365 and could potentially have poor email security on their end.

Using a third party for email security removes the single point of failure with one vendor. Most CIOs and CISOs would prefer to use only the Microsoft Office 365 email security. Still, they’ve complained that Microsoft’s Defender technology is not enough to catch sophisticated threats including zero-day phishing campaigns or ransomware attachments built to hide from the Microsoft Office 365 security systems. Not only is Defender and Office 365 email security lacking in some features, but it also does not have the customized security built for compliance and industry-specific details offered with TitanHQ solutions.

Microsoft 365 is one of the most popular application suites for businesses and has become a popular target for cybercriminals.

How Does EncryptTitan Work?

Our engineers and developers built EncryptTitan to make it convenient for administrators to integrate into their environment. The default out-of-the-box configurations have your email security set up within minutes, but EncryptTitan is also fully flexible for every environment. Administrators can configure the solution to integrate with their specific environment requirements. Also, EncryptTitan is built to comply with most HIPAA, PCI-DSS, CCPA, and GDPR regulations. Administrators can configure their copy of the EncryptTitan solution to meet their compliance requirements.

EncryptTitan uses manual configurations from the sender or triggers encryption using keywords found in the subject line of an email message. Administrators and users have three options for encryption, and each option has its advantages and disadvantages.

TLS Verify Delivery

For government agencies and organizations with highly sensitive data included in email messages, TLS Verify is often the preferred delivery method. EncryptTitan uses the most secure standard for encryption, which is current TLS version 1.2 or 1.3. Lower versions of TLS are no longer safe, so they should not be used for any data in transit, including email messages.

When an administrator has TLS Verify configured as the default, EncryptTitan attempts first to send a message using this delivery method. TLS Verify requires the recipient to have decryption capabilities on their email server. The recipient mail host must match the digital certificate's common name (CN) installed on their server. Both the TLS version and the certificate must pass these requirements before EncryptTitan can deliver a message. If EncryptTitan cannot deliver a message using TLS Verify or the recipient does not pass the requirements, the system will try the next level of encryption security.

Easy-Secure Delivery / No Registration Required

Users can send and encrypt their messages using the Easy-Secure method in EncryptTitan. This method is the password-less option, which is convenient for recipients with no TLS version installed on their email server and an alternative method for recipients with misconfigured security certificates on their email server. 

Easy-Secure is also the most convenient for recipients. Recipients receive a message with a link to the message where they can automatically decrypt and securely read its content. Administrators can also configure EncryptTitan to require recipients to request a one-time password (OTP) to open a message. The OTP can be delivered to a recipient’s smartphone in text messages or using their email address. Since the message is stored on the EncryptTitan secure portal environment, it is encrypted at rest and cannot be opened without an OTP or the decryption key included in the link.

Secure Portal Delivery / Registration Required

The most secure option for recipients and senders is the EncryptTitan Secure Portal delivery method. It’s not as convenient as the Easy-Secure delivery method, but it’s more secure than TLS Verify. It does not require a recipient to have decryption capabilities on their email server. The one disadvantage is that EncryptTitan requires a recipient to authenticate into the secure portal system using valid credentials, unlike the Easy-Secure portal that offers an OTP option.

Organizations using the Secure Portal delivery method have more flexibility in configurations and options associated with email delivery. Senders and administrators can require two-factor authentication (2FA) to log into the portal, add an audit trail, recall a message, and allow the recipient to reply using end-to-end encryption security.

The Secure Portal delivery method is the most secure but adds steps to the recipient’s workflow. All three methods have their use cases, and administrators can configure EncryptTitan to allow users to specify their delivery method. The delivery method users choose can be overridden should they fail to encrypt important messages. Administrators set triggers to catch sensitive data in email messages and automatically encrypt them before they leave the internal environment.

The table below summarizes the advantages and options for all three delivery methods.

Benefits of Working with EncryptTitan

Adding layers of security to your organization’s environment is often met with hesitation when administrators think that it will complicate your current workflow and cause an interruption in services. The Microsoft Office 365 integrated security system serves its purpose, but organizations passing sensitive information over email protocols must take extra precautions. Using EncryptTitan adds several benefits to their security strategy.

Better Compliance

A data breach costs hundreds per record, and the following fees could bankrupt a small organization. As more laws are put in place to protect user data, organizations must take extra steps to ensure that their environment follows the latest compliance standards and requirements. For example, HIPAA requires all sensitive patient data to be encrypted at rest and in transit. EncryptTitan provides end-to-end encryption benefits that follow HIPAA compliance standards.

Audit trails in the EncryptTitan Secure Portal delivery method also offer better compliance options. Any changes to consumer data or communication, including consumer data, should be logged in case a data breach occurs, and investigators must review logged information. Audit trails detailing who requested, edited, and deleted data should always be part of your security and compliance strategy.  EncryptTitan provides audit trails for investigations, and other TitanHQ solutions will archive email messages for future disaster recovery and litigation discovery.

Microsoft Office 365 integrated security serves its purpose, but organizations passing sensitive information over email protocols must take extra precautions. Using EncryptTitan adds several benefits to your security strategy.

Brand Reputation Protection

After a data breach, consumers are unaware of the impact until it affects their financial security and identity protection. The impact of millions of consumers generates negative press across local and international news. Brand damage from negative press can negatively impact corporate brand trust and loyalty, which could be the defining moment when consumers decide to try a competitor. Once lost, it’s difficult to win back customers and build customer loyalty again.

End-to-end encryption protects from eavesdropping and adds a layer of security should a major vendor such as Microsoft cause an indirect data breach in your own environment. Third-party vendor vulnerabilities are a concern for businesses that rely heavily on the cloud services supply chain, and any vulnerabilities from just one vendor can affect all the vendor’s customers. Having a failsafe in EncryptTitan adds a layer of security that must be bypassed before eavesdroppers and cyber-criminals can access email message content. Encryption includes attachments, so files containing sensitive information sent in email are also protected.

A high-level cybersecurity strategy protects user data, protecting your brand from third-party vendor vulnerabilities. Your users might be concerned, but customer service can assure them that their data is secure from your own added layers of data protection. Data protection strategies give users assurance that their data is safe, and it could attract customers from competitors who fell victim to a vendor’s compromise.

Protection from Intellectual Property Theft

Many organizations and government agencies use email services to send and receive intellectual property in a message’s content or as an attachment file. End-to-end encryption is crucial to protect intellectual property, and some services do not properly protect sensitive data contained in documents as attachments. It’s critical that organizations have full data protection from eavesdropping and theft.

Using EncryptTitan, businesses protect their intellectual property including content in email messages and attachments. Senders have access to a secure portal where they can store and retrieve their messages, and recipients can use a secure portal to store their messages and archive them if necessary. Senders can see the audit trail to identify when a message was read, when an attachment document was read or printed, and when the message was deleted.

Message Expiration Dates and Recalls

Infinite accessibility for email leaves all your messages at risk of being stolen after an email-based data breach. For better security, users and administrators can set an expiration date in EncryptTitan to only allow an email to be retrieved for a limited amount of time. EncryptTitan lets users and administrators set an expiration date for as little as one day or as long as 180 days. For extremely sensitive information, users should set the expiration date for a short amount of time. 

Recalling messages is another benefit of EncryptTitan that puts security in the hands of a user. Suppose that a user sends a message to the wrong recipient or no longer wants the message to be available after forgetting to set an expiration date. Users can choose to recall a message so that it’s no longer available to the recipient. 

Both expiration date settings and recalling messages are an added layer of security that protects data and reduces risks of data disclosure. Email can be recalled when the sender loses trust in the recipient’s security. For example, if the recipient suffers from a data breach, messages can be recalled, helping protect the sender’s sensitive information. With an expiration date, a recipient’s data breach would not expose sensitive information from a sender if the message was older than the time limitation set to access the email content.

Full Audit Trails

Audit trails aren’t only beneficial for compliance. They are also beneficial for incident response, investigations into the legal discovery process, and user reviews of how recipients manage their documents and data. Any sender or administrator can review activity on the email, even if the activity is from the recipient’s end. Because messages are stored on the EncryptTitan cloud environment, activity is logged from cloud activity without the recipient being able to bypass any logging actions.

Logs can be archived, individually scanned, or printed to keep a personal audit trail between sender and recipient. For organizations that share highly sensitive information in email, audit trails are critical for investigations into the disclosure of data. Reviewing audit trails could lead investigators to the source of a data breach and explain the point at which data could have been unintentionally disclosed to a third party.

Full Integration with Microsoft Outlook

To make the encryption process easy for users, EncryptTitan includes a Microsoft Outlook plugin. After installing the EncryptTitan plugin, users have a convenient button in their interface to encrypt an email on the fly. Users can also choose the type of encryption process that they want to use: TLS Verify, Easy-Secure, and Secure Portal.

The Outlook plugin also shows users that the interface messages are unprotected so they can remember to encrypt them. With EncryptTitan, users have the ability to protect their emails conveniently and without having any technical knowledge. Having options to use the encryption type of their choosing also lets senders customize the way they protect messages based on their recipient’s preferred delivery method.

Automatic Encryption Using Triggers

It’s likely that a user might forget to encrypt a message or mistakenly think that a message does not contain sensitive information. EncryptTitan includes a failsafe that triggers the encryption of a message based on specific keywords configured in the administration panel. All TitanHQ security solutions are based on multiple layers of data protection, and the failsafe automatic encryption process protects email message contents when a user does not take necessary precautions.

The customized trigger words allow a business to encrypt messages based on common specific industry terms automatically. For example, a hospital administrator might set triggers on the words “patient” or “social” to catch any employee sending unencrypted messages with patient data or social security numbers in the content. When a sender creates an email message and does not encrypt sensitive data, the customized trigger words automatically protect it without the sender’s intervention. This feature improves compliance and data protection for the entire organization and does not allow for accidental cleartext email messages with private data. 

Managed Service Provider Benefits

Not only does EncryptTitan bring benefits to enterprise corporations, but all TitanHQ cloud software is built with managed service providers in mind. An enterprise administrator works with a single organization, but a managed service provider needs to manage potentially hundreds of clients. The EncryptTitan cloud software dashboard is built with a managed service provider’s perspective and allows the management of several clients in one dashboard.

A managed service provider can look at all their clients on one dashboard, manage licensing options, review configurations, and get updates on any client changes. All support requests and customers are available in a single dashboard, so a managed service provider does not need to open several tabs to manage a single application for numerous clients. The single-dashboard convenience reduces the risks of a mistake while making a managed service provider administrator more efficient at their job.

Administrators managing several clients have the ability to configure their customer email configurations in one location so that the chance for mistakes is reduced. A managed service provider can set up SPF and DKIM configurations, client domains, branding, outbound servers, user accounts, policies for automatic encryption, and encryption events. All activity happens in the cloud, and EncryptTitan keeps a log of activity so that an enterprise client or a managed service provider can review it during audits and compliance requirements.

Cloud-Based Updates and Low Maintenance Requirements

A cloud-based solution reduces much of the overhead administrators experience when an enterprise hosts their own email servers and security infrastructure. With an on-premises solution, enterprise administrators must be responsible for the setup of the server and server configurations, ensuring hardware is maintained and in a cool location, adding cybersecurity to the server, and constantly monitoring the email server for any suspicious activity. Maintaining on-premises email servers requires at least one employee to ensure that servers are consistently monitored and maintained. EncryptTitan gives administrators the power of email security and data loss prevention without the expensive and time-consuming overhead.

When your enterprise uses TitanHQ solutions, our cloud-based security software needs no hardware maintenance, no updates to the server operating system, and no security patches. We manage all the tedious overhead and let administrators focus on the configuration of the security software. Deploying all TitanHQ solutions takes minutes, including EncryptTitan. Administrators must register the software and configure a few settings, and within minutes, the cloud software is ready to secure business email messages.

Using EncryptTitan, businesses protect their intellectual property including content in email messages and attachments.

Chief Executive of SRA

Out-of-the-Box Configurations for Quick Deployments

For enterprise businesses unfamiliar with email settings and security configurations, EncryptTitan has several pre-configured policies and settings that can be used for most basic email messaging. Administrators can still change out-of-the-box configurations in the future as the business changes and more email must be secured, but the initial settings that come with the EncryptTitan cloud email software are sufficient for small to midsize businesses. 

The convenience of the EncryptTitan cloud email security software lets administrators roll out email encryption within minutes. This feature is best suited for organizations without a security professional to help them configure more complex software. EncryptTitan developers built the pre-configured settings for this reason – to give guidance to businesses without a cybersecurity expert on staff to help deploy an effective email encryption solution with the right solutions to protect your data.

World-Class Support Team

When you work with TitanHQ, you have access to our highly-rated support team, known for our quick response and availability. Our customer support team is available to help with deployments and any challenges you face during deployments. Some organizations need a migration plan and spend time testing a new solution, and the TitanHQ customer support is there for any questions that you might have during testing or deployment to your production environment.

Our customers rate the TitanHQ support team highly for all their answered questions and help through migration and technical challenges. No question is too simple or complex for our customer support team, and we have dedicated support for the EncryptTitan software. Should you decide to integrate other TitanHQ security infrastructure, our support team can help you deploy all our cloud solutions to work seamlessly with your users and business productivity workflows.

Secure Archives and Access Portal

Small and large businesses can leverage the EncryptTitan cloud storage and archiving solutions to ensure that email messages are kept safe. Businesses should move email messages to a dedicated archiving storage location. TitanHQ has ArcTitan to help provide an environment specific for archiving sensitive data for compliance, legal investigations, and disaster recovery. When a recipient replies to a sender or a sender chooses to use the Secure Portal delivery method, email messages are stored in a safe location behind sophisticated security infrastructure provided by TitanHQ engineers. We are experts in email security, and we bring our expertise to your business.

Access to the EncryptTitan Secure Portal requires complex and cryptographically secure passwords for all administrators and business users. Recipients must use two-factor authentication to retrieve encrypted messages. EncryptTitan lets users choose to obtain a one-time password or have a PIN sent to their smartphones via text messages. The two-factor authentication adds another layer of protection to email messages and sensitive data.

Find Out How EncryptTitan Can Help Your Business

Email continues to be the primary attack vector for cybercriminals. It is therefore vital for organizations of all sizes to practice good email security hygiene and utilize an email encryption solution when sending sensitive company information over email. 

Email should be encrypted in transit and at rest, and many common solutions have only in-transit encryption. You need to encrypt messages at rest to stop cyber-criminals from reading messages using malware for data exfiltration and ransomware threats. EncryptTitan gives you end-to-end encryption and data protection for data in both its forms.

Book a FREE EncryptTitan demo and learn how EncryptTitan can protect your organization from advanced email security risks. Speak with one of our product experts to see exactly how EncryptTitan works without any commitment.