Criteria for Finding the Best Email Encryption Software

As the name implies email encryption software encrypts contents of electronic messages and their attachments from unauthorized disclosure during the transition. These software solutions may also function automatically and encrypt e-mails depending upon their content, types of attachments and various other attributes. Manual solutions are also available in which users are required to manually choose an encryption option for every email they send in order to protect them.

Software solutions for secure email are being used for a pretty long time and the first generation of these products was based upon public key infrastructure or PKI that is pretty expensive to setup and maintain. Moreover PKI based encryption software solutions also have some usability problems, for they need keys to be exchanged manually, particularly to recipients who are not part of the organization. Users were often found sending wrong keys or came across recipients who don’t have the required keys for decrypting the messages and therefore this type of mail encryption is not much preferred. The second generation of email encryption products is now widely used and instead of depending upon any PKI second generation, encrypt email software dynamically generates encryption keys and also handles all key management tasks virtually – behind the scene.

The job of determining which email encryption software is the best for a particular enterprise can be really intimidating especially when services like ‘identity-based encryption’ are also being offered by many vendors. In order to make sure that you are using the right secure email server for safely encrypting the mails sent or received by your enterprise, you need to make sure that the product you choose meets all six basic criteria for evaluation of email encryption products:

• Internal and/or external user support
• Integration of existing email infrastructure
• Strength of cryptography
• File security
• Mobile device support and
• Both policy and identity based encryption

It is true that almost all second generation email encryption software provides internal and external user support but the level of support does vary considerably from one product to another product and offering both manual and automatic support for the users are probably the better choices.

When it comes to finding the right software to securely encrypt email messages, strength of cryptography is one of the most important factors to consider. Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm is now used by most products and many vendors have already shifted to 256 bit keys for greater cryptographic strength. Whatever email encryption method you choose – file protection is considered as first and foremost requirement and the product you choose to buy must also support encryption of the attached files. Most second generation encryption solutions come with this feature along with a number of additional options for improved file security and can even encrypt much larger files. The secure email server that supports file size of up to 100MB is obviously the better choice. Most email encryption software vendors are now available online and you can contact them anytime you wish by visiting their websites like http://zixmailencryption.com/.

About The Author

Zeena McWarden is a cyber-security expert who writes many interesting articles to help bring email encryption and its advantages into the domain of common people. You can trust her advice for all your data security and integrity preservation requirements.

Zeena McWarden is a cyber security expert who writes many interesting articles to help bring email encryption and its advantages into the domain of common people. You can trust her advice for all your data security and integrity preservation requirem