Why Your Users and Clients Should Encrypt Emails

Your business communication holds secrets to your customer data, corporate strategies, contract arrangements, intellectual property, and sensitive information from numerous other corporate deals.  Encryption protects email communication from being eavesdropped on and stolen by a third party. Eavesdropping is common when network traffic isn’t encrypted, so organizations can better protect their sensitive data when any egress traffic –including email—is encrypted with the current cryptographically secure cipher.

What is Email Encryption?

Email is the primary communication tool for many organizations, so it holds sensitive information only intended for specific recipients. Like any internet traffic, email messages must be transferred from network to network until they reach the recipient’s exchange server. Once the recipient’s server stores the message, it’s available to the recipient to download and read.

As each message hops between networks, it traverses a third-party environment. Administrators for this environment have control over the traffic on their network so that they can log, reject, transfer, or intercept any message and relay it. Interception and relay of network traffic make data, including sensitive information, available to the eavesdropper. An eavesdropper can read sensitive information when it isn’t encrypted; the sender and recipient would be unaware of it.

Encrypting email does not stop a third party from intercepting messages, but the third party would not be able to read it. Only the recipient with the key to decrypt a message can read it. An email encryption solution gives the sender the tools to encrypt messages, and the recipient is given the tools and interface to decrypt read messages. Only the sender and the intended recipient can read messages with an email encryption solution.

Why Should Businesses Use Email Encryption?

Email encryption might be unnecessary for individuals sharing pictures and non-sensitive information. Businesses share much more sensitive information in every email, and a business could have thousands of employee email accounts. You can train users not to share information in an email, but mistakes happen, and users don’t always know the type of data that should not be made public. Email is the most insecure form of communication, so businesses need a way to protect information sent in messages.

Small businesses often think the data they store or the messages they send don’t contain information an attacker would be interested in. Attackers know that small businesses don’t have the budget for advanced security infrastructure, which makes them a bigger target than an enterprise in some scenarios. It’s important for small and large companies to install security to protect their data.

Interception of email messages can lead to persistent threats, credential theft, or disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII). For example, suppose that an executive is working with lawyers about litigation over intellectual property. Sender and recipient would discuss sensitive business strategies and information in an email. Without encryption, the email messages could be intercepted during transit and read without effort. The information could be used to extort money from the sender or recipient, leaving the business vulnerable to sabotage.

Many businesses are bound to follow specific compliance regulations for their industry or general consumer protection regulations. Encryption protects the data that regulatory compliance lists as personally identifiable information (PII) and consumer data. Consumer data could be financial or contact information that could lead to identity theft. Compliance violations carry hefty fines, and an email encryption solution reduces the risks of exposing sensitive data. Corporations reduce the risks of dealing with the aftermath of a data breach, which can be costly for litigation, incident response, remediation, and brand damage.

Email Encryption protects any data sent in email messages, especially data sent over the internet and visible to third parties.

Benefits of Using Email Encryption Software

Aside from the data protection aspect, email encryption also has several other benefits. The benefits far outweigh the effort to deploy a solution. The return on your investment is lower risk of sensitive data disclosure and protection of corporate secrets. It might seem like a threat, but staying proactive with your data security and privacy saves millions after a data breach.

Here are a few more benefits of an email encryption solution:

• Good email encryption vendors manage certificates and don’t require more overhead for administrators to many keys.
• Require read receipts and revoke access to verify recipients' receipt of messages and messages that have not been persistently available for too long.
• Protect any data sent in email messages, especially data sent over the internet and visible to third parties.
• Administrators set preferences on activities when sensitive information is found in outgoing emails, and the encryption solution will automatically encrypt any data to avoid compliance violations.
• Brand your outgoing messages and the portal used for recipients to view encrypted messages so that they know messages are from a legitimate sender.
• Cloud-based solutions reduce overhead for provisioning and deployment, making it easier for administrators to manage email encryption solutions.
• Lower costs with cloud-based solutions from lower staff overhead and vendor-managed updates to the software.
• Add a layer of protection on platform email services like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365.

How EncryptTitan Can Help

EncryptTitan encrypts email either automatically or according to user preferences. Encryption works with TLS 1.2, which is the lowest version allowed for many compliance regulations (e.g., HIPAA). The Outlook plugin lets users manually encrypt email messages when they know they contain sensitive data, but administrators can set keyword triggers to automatically encrypt data as it leaves the business email exchange.

The email encryption solution works in the cloud, so administrators don’t need to deploy updates or manage infrastructure. EncryptTitan works with a few configurations and generally works out of the box. It can be deployed in minutes, and the portal for recipients to read encrypted messages can be customers with your own brand logo.

Brand reputation protection from EncryptTitan reduces the risks of a data breach. The damage from a data breach can be long-lasting, and a significant data breach can haunt the brand for several years. Eavesdroppers on a network are difficult to detect when they intercept data as it traverses the Internet. Instead, encrypting email using EncryptTitan protects your brand from these eavesdroppers.

To see what EncryptTitan can do, try out our sign up for a free demo.