Email is a vital communication channel for business and personal use. Yet, it can be a target for hackers who are looking to break in and steal sensitive information.
One of the best ways to ensure your communications remain secure is to encrypt them. This will help to prevent unauthorized users from reading your messages and attachments, and will protect the integrity of your inbox.
Encryption
Encrypted Email is a process that scrambles or conceals readable email messages until they are received by their intended recipients. This is necessary to protect sensitive information from being read by unintended or unauthorized parties.
Messages are encrypted using public key cryptography, which involves two keys: a private key used to encrypt emails and a public key used by recipients to decrypt them. The public key is stored on a key server along with the name and email address of the sender, while the private key is stored on the recipient’s computer.
The public key can be found online by anyone, and can be shared with other people to send them encrypted emails. The public key is also used to digitally sign email messages so that the recipient knows it came from a specific person.
Keys
Email encryption uses something called public key cryptography to make sure the message you send is only read by the person you intend to. It works by creating a pair of digital codes – one for encrypting and the other for decrypting – and storing them on a key server.
This makes the contents of the message impossible to be decoded by a non-technical person who does not know how to use the corresponding private key. Using this method, email encryption can be performed to secure corporate data and to protect against compliance violations.
Some of the most common methods of email encryption include symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. Symmetric encryption uses the same key for both encrypting and decrypting a message, while asymmetric uses a separate, unique key for each. In general, asymmetric encryption algorithms are more reliable and are generally easier to implement. Some of the most popular asymmetric encryption techniques include S/MIME, PGP (link is external), and OpenPGP.
Recipients
Email encryption is an important security tool to protect sensitive data. It uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) to encrypt email between SMTP relays, keeping it secure from unauthorized users or malicious hackers.
When a recipient receives an encrypted message, they can click on the link to securely read it and respond as needed. Depending on the email provider, they may need to verify their identity by signing in again or by using a one-time passcode.
Some recipients may see a red lock icon next to their email address in Outlook. This indicates that they are not in your exchange environment and/or you haven’t installed their certificate.
When you encrypt an email, the sender and recipient generate key pairs and share their public keys with each other. This ensures that only the person with the private key that matches the public key can read the message.
Security
Encryption aims to hide the content of email messages in order to prevent anyone other than the intended recipient from reading them. This includes sensitive information like Social Security numbers, login credentials and bank account numbers.
Despite this, email is still the primary attack vector for cybercriminals. As such, organizations must practice proper email security hygiene and utilize an email encryption solution to protect intellectual property and other valuable data.
End-to-end encrypted email combines public and private keys to encrypt the data at all stages of its journey from sender to recipient. This means even if a malicious third-party or over-reaching government managed to access the message, all they would receive is jibberish!
Conclusion
End-to-end encryption can include symmetric or asymmetric cryptography. Symmetric encryption is faster and simpler, while asymmetric encrypts the data by using two separate sets of keys.