Send Secure Emails In Outlook: Working Tips
Misuse of personal information will lead to fines and other punishments for those who must comply with data privacy regulations such as HIPAA or GDPR. This is a particular concern for the banking and healthcare sectors but affects all businesses to some degree.
With cybersecurity issues on the increase, email encryption is vital. To ensure you are fully safeguarded, it is important to highest level of encryption possible.
Without email encryption, your emails can be easily read while in transit, some hackers will use the information in these email for extortion, identity theft, corporate espionage and more. Others will change details in the email and then forward them to the original recipient, or instance, changing the bank account number on an invoice to be the hacker’s account.
How to use encrypted email
The email encryption services of Microsoft Outlook are not as secure as you may think. This is because Outlook uses S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) which relies on both the sender and recipient having this activated.
If you email someone who is not also using encryption you may not be protected. Free webmail services, such as Gmail, Yahoo, and iCloud, will often have little to no encryption enabled.
Using Other Encryption Methods
You can use a third-party email encryption service, instead of having to deal with swapping email platforms. But, for both the sender and the recipient, you will want to make sure you pick a product that makes this as easy as possible.
Email encryption must be easy to use. Some email encryption may require additional effort and technical skill, making it harder to use, especially for the non-technically minded. If this is the case, employees your company will not apply it consistently.
Some good, easy to use third-party software for email encryption (and general email security) are Mimecast and Barracuda.
These provide email encryption, encrypting the contents and subject of the email, as well any attachments. They also allow you to open suspicious emails in a cloud-based environment away from your network, keeping you safe from malicious attachments and hacking attempt.
In Conclusion
While hacking incidents and data breaches are becoming more prevalent every year, many enterprises are still not protecting themselves against them. This is placing themselves at risk of both financial damage and reputational damage unnecessarily.
Fortunately, with tools for email encryption like Mimecast and Barracuda, you can improve the outlook email security of your emails against data breaches. a Now, without losing smooth teamwork, you will reclaim ownership over who gets access to your emails.
If you are unsure about how to implement email encryption or want to have the peace of mind that it has been done correctly it is always worth contacting a third-party managed IT services provider who will help to plan, implement, and audit your email encryption solution as well as helping with other aspect of your enterprise’s IT.
You should also be aware that having email encryption does not automatically make you free from online threats, you should still exercise common sense when sending or receiving sensitive information via email.
