Making a Business Case for Encryption
End-to-end encryption software for email should be part of every business’s standard security arsenal. With over 290 billion emails sent worldwide every day, protecting the sensitive information your organisation shares over email is crucial.
If your company doesn’t take measures to protect data en route to its destination and you suffer a breach, you could be hit with substantial fines. Recovering from a hack like this will pose significant challenges. Here are the basics of what you need to know to reduce the chance of the worst case scenario from happening.
What is End-to-End Encryption?
When end-to-end encryption is used, the messages sent from one device will be encrypted in such a way to ensure that only the device they are sent to will be able to decrypt the contents. This means that while the message travels from the sender to its recipient, secrecy is maintained.
You effectively lock your emails in an invincible safe. Your end-to-end encrypted communication will be undecipherable by anyone except the recipient.
No one can replace your message while it's in transit. If someone attempted to change the encrypted data, the text would be jumbled, immediately alerting you to the problem.
This method therefore has a huge advantage over alternatives like using a third-party, encryption-in-transit scheme (such as via an application server). Or, even worse, not encrypting your business communications at all. Both leave your messages vulnerable to interception and risk the privacy of your corporate and client data.
What Does the Software Do?
This software automatically automatically encrypts the emails and attachments that you send, safeguarding any confidential information contained in the message. The keys needed to send and access encrypted emails will also be automatically generated behind the scenes.
The software can be set up to work when communicating with others in your organisation, with external service providers, or even with clients.
Protecting Emails to Customers
Securing clients’ sensitive information is not just a matter of due diligence, but of meeting customer expectations and building trust. Securing their data is business critical.
End-to-end encryption software eases the pressure on your organisation in this regard. It allows you to communicate confidential data directly to your clients over email rather than relying on them to log on to your website to access their information. This can improve your reputation for excellent customer service and quickly put a stop to fraudulent activity.
However, it is no good assuming that clients will have the capabilities to encrypt emails themselves. We can help you to set up the software so that it includes an easy-to-use encryption mechanism for your customers to read and reply to your emails without compromising your cybersecurity infrastructure.
Protecting Comms to Third Parties
Emails between your company and its partners are especially important to encrypt as you will often be sharing necessary but sensitive data. Your end-to-end software can be set up to check any emails heading to people outside your organisation, acting as a gateway.
If your policy states that this type of email needs to be encrypted (for example, if it is going to a particular partner such as a payroll processor, or if it contains a specific type of confidential information), then the software will automatically carry out this process. From your staff’s perspective, though, they will just be sending emails as normal.
This is a major advantage over rival encryptions, such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). For this alternative to work, the sender and the recipient need to generate and trade public keys before exchanging emails. This quickly becomes inconvenient, time-consuming, and confusing.
End-to-end is a simpler and more effective option for safeguarding data when working with third parties. The user from your vendor will actually receive an email with a hyperlink to a website in the Cloud which then displays the contents over an encrypted channel. The recipient then replies through this interface, and their message is encrypted using your software.
Protecting Messages Internally
While it may not be immediately apparent to non-specialists, sending unencrypted emails to colleagues within your organisation can also pose a substantial threat. If your internal hosts are compromised, or malware infects a device within the local network, hackers could capture the contents of any unencrypted emails stored in your system.
Don’t leave a hole in your defences by neglecting the integrity of your internal comms cybersecurity framework. Applying end-to-end encryption to all of your organisation’s end points (mobile devices, laptops, desktops) will add an extra layer of security. Users sending emails will simply need to determine whether the message contains sensitive information and merits encryption. Recipients can then have their emails deciphered automatically by the software.
Get Expert Guidance
Ultimately, using end-to-end encryption software for email is a low cost investment that will drastically improve your defences against data breaches - which can be extremely expensive and damaging to your company’s reputation.
Getting expert advice when purchasing and installing your software will maximise the results of your investment. Do you need Cloud solutions, dynamic scaling, or flexible delivery and policy-based encryption features? Is your internet service actually providing end-to-end encryption? Many internet communication services misleadingly advertise this encryption and don’t offer it in practice. The importance of establishing the answers to these questions and more cannot be overstated.
Defended Solutions will tailor the end-to-end email encryption software package to the needs of your organisation. Our expert team will help you identify where your money will be best spent and improve your overall cybersecurity infrastructure. Contact us today to find out how we can be of service.
