Tech Term: What Does “Encryption” Mean?

Email is a solution that needs to be protected, lest you expose important information to any onlookers while messages are in transit. Encryption is one of the key ways you can make sure that your messages are safe, but email hasn’t always used this method to secure messages. In fact, it wasn’t until relatively recently that encryption became a staple of the major email providers.

Why Encryption Matters
It’s important to keep in mind that email communications are not always private. Depending on whether or not the email provider offers encryption can potentially expose important information found within the message. The reason why you need encryption is simply because you would never want to expose this information to outside viewers under any circumstances. You would be doing your company a disservice, and potentially even be in violation of data privacy regulations (depending on your industry).

Either way, our point is that encryption is necessary if you want to avoid the ugly side of the Internet. This includes hackers of all kinds, who would stop at nothing to get past your business’ protections and steal information of value. It’s up to you to put measures in place to stop them in their tracks--before it’s too late.

How Email Encryption Works
Imagine for a moment that your emails are locked in a box. This box remains locked the second that it leaves your organization, and it will stay that way until it is received by someone who has the key. In this case, the recipient will have the key, and the box would be unlocked once it is received by them. In the event that the box is intercepted before it reaches its destination, whoever claims it will not be able to view its contents. This is essentially how encryption works.

The important thing to remember about encryption is that it needs to be an infrastructure-wide implementation. You can’t encrypt only messages that contain sensitive information, as this can potentially make you an even bigger target in the eyes of hackers. Therefore, you need to make sure that your encryption solution is all-encompassing so as to eliminate any risk associated with email security.

Does your business need email encryption? Directive can help by implementing an enterprise-level email encryption solution that takes into account all of your business needs. We can also provide other types of email security tools, including spam protection that limits exposure to dangerous entities. To learn more, reach out to us at 607.433.2200.