When you need to protect the privacy of an email message, it’s best to encrypt it. By doing so, the content of the message is very hard to read unless you have authorised access. Not only does this prevent unwanted people from deciphering the message but sensitive data is less likely to be leaked.
Here’s all you need to know about email encryption and why you need it.
How does email encryption work?
Encrypting an email means ensuring that recipients can know whether an email was actually sent by you and not a spammer as well as protecting the contents of the email itself. The process relies on a public key infrastructure (used by those sending the email) and a private key infrastructure (used by the intended recipient). The key is then used to decipher the message so that only intended recipients can access the content.
What needs to be encrypted?
Encrypting email messages before they’re sent means that even if a hacker or anyone other than the intended recipient should intercept your email messages, they’re unreadable and therefore important data cannot be accessed.
There are several encryption methods that can be used such as the digital signature that makes it clear which emails were sent by you and which may be spam. Following best practices, it’s a good idea to consistently encrypt all messages you send and receive. Why? Well, only encrypting important emails makes them more obvious to spot and therefore raises a flag to hackers.
You should consider encrypting the following:
- The connection from your email provider
- Your actual email messages
- Your stored, cached, or archived email messages
When you encrypt all email messages as a standard practice, hackers wishing to access your personal information have a more substantial task in front of them, therefore keeping you safer!
At MailCleaner, our anti-spam software can handle the flow of encrypted messages with the mail servers that support this mode. If you’re looking for a solution that prevents up to 99% of spam, our software will protect your enterprise, government network or educational facility against viruses. Get in touch with us today for more information.