Email encryption – what it is and how it works

Technology has changed our lives many folds in the past few decades. One of the best inventions of all time, one that encompasses all and affects every facet of every person’s life on this planet, is of course the internet. Getting your information to travel across borders of physical distances and time lags has completely revolutionized the way we go about our daily business. Whether it is something as trivial as a Facebook update or something sensitive like national metrics that can affect a new government policy – anything and everything is now exchanged over the World Wide Web.

But just like always, dependency on technology too has its consequences. There are always miscreants and criminals lurking just around the corner, waiting for the chance when they can get their hands in your information so that they can misuse it for their own dubious purposes. This miscreant can be a professional hacker looking for sensitive data to sell out onto the wrong hands. This miscreant can be a jealous colleague trying to read your screen over your shoulder just to get enough information to bring your career down. And this is where technology like email encryption comes into play and helps people take stock.

When you send out any email, the data included in it travels in packets over large distances. We may not realize it, but every speck of information that we share over the internet travels from one server to another and passes through scores of these data storage and dissemination nodes before it reaches the final destination. And an experienced hacker can find a way to tap into these servers and extract your data. But this is data theft at a much larger level. What about your fellow workers trying to guess your password and gaining unauthorized access to your mail account just to see the new project you are currently working on or any sensitive numbers and data? These simple crimes happen every day and if the security of your data is important to you, you should consider going for email encryption.

What an encrypted email does is that it makes the data and information you are sharing in your mails into something that is strictly ‘FOR YOUR EYES ONLY’. This means either you or the intended recipient of the email will be the only two people allowed to set their eyes upon the information you are sharing. No one else will be able to access it. Wondering how its done? I’ll explain..

There are many email encryption softwares available in the market that provide foolproof ways to preserve the integrity of your data. They might use public key encryption systems in which the sender holds the key to encrypt the data and the receiver holds the key to decrypt. As long as the key pair doesn’t fall into the wrong hand, the data included in the e mail remains safe. There are many other, more sophisticated forms of email encryption existing as well but public key encryption happens to be the most popular one. If you need more information about it, please visit 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.