Virtually all businesses sent at least some sensitive data via email, yet email is not a secure method of communication. By default, emails are sent in plaintext which means they can be intercepted in transit unless email encryption software is used.
Consider the process of sending a business email – An employee writes the email on their workstation, clicks send and the message goes to the mail server, then it is sent over the Internet to the destination mail server, and then the recipient opens the message in their mail client. At each stage of that journey, a copy of the message will be saved in plaintext on each machine. The email will also be vulnerable on the journey between mail servers. Also consider what happens if an employee is working remotely and is accessing the Internet from a public Wi-Fi network, or their unsecured home network. The risk of interception of emails increases considerably, which is why so many businesses are now using email encryption software.
Hackers Target Unencrypted Business Emails
Hackers target business emails because they contain valuable information that can be easily monetized or abused. Last year, email communications between a UK homebuyer and the lawyer handling the transfer of funds had their emails intercepted. The hacker altered the payment information in the emails and the homebuyer transferred £640,000 to the attacker’s account. By the time the scam was detected, most of the funds had been withdrawn and could not be recovered.
A wide range of sensitive data is sent via email, including company information, financial information, and the personal data of customers and employees. If any of that information is intercepted and stolen, businesses can face lawsuits, brand damage, and loss of trust in the company.
If regulated data is sent via email and the emails are not encrypted, businesses can face significant fines for non-compliance, even if emails are not stolen. In the United States, the failure to protect healthcare data in emails can attract a financial penalty of up to $1.5 million per year. There are also financial penalties for the failure to protect credit card information in emails under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), and many other federal, state and industry regulations require data to be protected to ensure privacy.
Given the risks associated with sending sensitive data via email, security experts strongly recommend using email encryption software to secure sensitive emails and prevent interception in transit.
EncryptTitan Email Encryption Software
Encrypting business emails need not be complicated or expensive. There is no need to set up and maintain public key infrastructure to send encrypted emails, as email encryption software can be used to handle the entire encryption and decryption process. Email encryption software can be set up to automatically encrypt emails based on your company’s encryption policy, which helps to prevent human error and ensures compliance with federal, state, and industry regulations.
If you have tried encrypting emails before, you may have experienced problems with recipients being able to open messages. Some solutions make the process cumbersome and require codes to be sent separately to the same mailbox to decrypt messages, splitting emails into two. There are sometimes issues with individuals receiving encrypted emails if they are not signed up with the same email encryption service. With EncryptTitan you don’t get these problems.
EncryptTitan is a 100% cloud-based software-as-a-service solution that requires no hardware. Once configured with policy-based encryption, users can send emails as normal and the messages will be automatically encrypted. Recipients can usually open the messages with no user interaction required to decrypt the content. If for any reason, messages are sent to individuals where encryption is not supported, the messages will be automatically routed to a secure message center and an email will be automatically generated to tell the recipient to retrieve the message. The message can then be viewed by authenticating with the portal.
Businesses have full visibility into the emails that are sent. There is an extensive suite of reports that allow users to see who has read, printed, saved, deleted, and replied to messages, and users can instantly recall messages and set expiry dates after which messages will be automatically deleted if they have not been read. There is also the option of an Outlook client that can be used by employees to determine whether emails need to be encrypted. The client will give them the choice to encrypt or not when they send a message.
EncryptTitan email encryption software integrates seamlessly with Office 365 and Google G-Suite, and users benefit from TitanHQ’s world-class customer service, which starts with the product demonstration and continues through to after-sales, with help on hand 24/7. EncryptTitan is a multi-tenant solution that is ideal for managed service providers to use to add email encryption into their service stacks. MSPs can also add their branding to the secure email portal.
If you want to start protecting your email communications against unauthorized access and tampering, contact TitanHQ today and book a demo to see for yourself how easy it is to use our cloud-based email encryption software.
