Five Reasons You Need Email Encryption

The convenience and instant communication characteristic of email have made it an essential component of the corporate world. Companies also use email to exchange information between partners, suppliers, customers. Many times email contains personal or sensitive information that needs to be protected at all times as information sent over the Internet is not secure.

Information and passwords sent via standard unencrypted wireless can be easily intercepted by hackers. This makes a strong case for use of email encryption. Here are few reasons why businesses need to encrypt their email communication.

Data Leaks

For all the benefits email offers, it also comes with risks. The costs of data loss are huge not to mention the damage it does to the organization reputation and hefty fines it invites for violations regarding the storage and transmission of sensitive information.

According to GlobalSign reports, 22% of businesses experience data loss through email each year. $3.5 million is the average cost of a data breach to an organization. This can be prevented by employing email encryption solution.

With email encryption, your organization will get end-to-end encryption (from the source to the destination), the email resides on your server in an encrypted form. It means even if a hacker is able to break the security of your email server, decoding the messages on the server is impossible unless the hacker has the decryption key.

Message Integrity

Email encryption solutions also include a message integrity feature. During decryption process, the content of the decrypted mail is matched with original content of the message to verify content are intact. Even if there is a slight change in the contents of the email, the decryption process will fail.

Confidentiality

When you are sending financial information or any sensitive information about business deals, you would want only the right party (with decryption key) is able to access the information. The encryption of email maintains confidentiality ensuring the person intended to read the information only reads it. No one would want to reveal trade secrets, isn’t it true?

HIPPA Compliance

Companies operating in medical, insurance and healthcare field have to be more careful about the rules and regulations guiding storing, sharing, and sending of sensitive information through any communication channel.

Medical and Insurance companies are required to keep the patient’s health information private. If they fail to comply with HIPAA regulations, they run the risk of shutdown or sued for their negligence or inability to protect their consumer’s privacy. Only encrypted mail can ensure the companies meet HIPAA compliance.

Time Efficiency

Email encryption solutions are easy to use and there are no complex steps involved to encrypt your outgoing mail. The encryption of the mail happens on the fly and employees might be required to tick a single box to specify the mail needs to be encrypted before sending and the encryption system will take care of the rest.

When using email to send sensitive information, you should encrypt it or not send it. Email encryption is your best defense against malicious security crackers wanting to get hold of sensitive information. Anything else is not secure.

How do you protect your emails containing sensitive data? Please feel free to comment.

Securence is a leading provider of enterprise email filtering software that offers email protection and security services such as cloud email security, email encryption ( Securence.Com/Email-encryption ), email archiving and continuity solutions to small and large businesses. To learn more about our hosted exchange solution, visit Securence.Com/Hosted-exchange-solution.

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