Showcase: Elevate Your Digital Business with Secure Email Encryption

Email has long been the most common means of electronic communication both within and between organizations, as well as with customers, and the importance of email is steadily increasing. With broad usage, email often contains sensitive or confidential information that is all too rarely protected. Many organizations are realizing that they need to encrypt sensitive information in email, as interception of this information can be compromising and damaging. Further, organizations are facing new and evolving regulatory and compliance standards that can best be met by encryption. Many organizations also see that email encryption can deliver important customer benefits. The public has become more concerned about theft of their private data, and many people now choose to do business with companies based on those companies’ ability to deliver better protection for their personal or sensitive information. For such customers, email encryption can be evidence of an organization’s commitment to data protection.

Thus, it is not unusual today for executive leadership to fully support efforts to protect email communications containing private or sensitive information with effective encryption. In fact, most enterprises today have a mature and progressing set of data privacy and compliance policies that can be the foundation of a comprehensive email encryption strategy (see Figure 1).

When email encryption is employed, both customers and employees can see that data protection is a corporate commitment. Visible email encryption improves sender and recipient confidence that their data is protected.

Providing IT, developer, and SecOps teams with a platform that can be integrated into the app development and upgrade processes makes data protection an intrinsic part of these processes. Incorporating encryption as a part of the processes provides better, more reliable security than bolting on encryption at the end of the development process.

An email encryption platform that accommodates multiple use cases ensures that organizations can secure their email communication for internal and external communications and for senders and recipients that may not understand why they need encryption or how to use email encryption.

The need to encrypt email is paramount, as organizations are routinely sending sensitive and critical data in clear text. Fast and easy deployment of email encryption limits the potential damage should unencrypted data become exposed. And, as technical teams that deploy the encryption platform build knowledge and expertise, each subsequent project involving the platform goes faster.

Deploying an email encryption platform that quickly adapts to changing compliance requirements by updating existing encryption processes simplifies maintaining compliance.

One essential feature is strong encryption protection for messages both on the server and in the user’s inbox. Another is encryption that is applied to both inbound and outbound messages, with push and pull encryption options. The encryption solution must also work with common standards such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), PGP, S/MIME, or PDF. And the platform should support numerous options for authentication, including user-created authentication and platform-provided authentication.

An effective email encryption platform provides seamless encryption and is simple to use. Users need to be able to send and receive encrypted email without installing new software or downloading additional tools. The type of device being used should not matter, and multiple methods of encryption delivery should be available so that users can choose the one that best suits their current needs. Ease of use demands that those methods of delivery be accessible from the message itself.

An important capability for email encryption platforms is close integration with key on-premises email platforms such as Microsoft Exchange, plus cloud-based email platforms such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365. In addition, the platform must support a consistent set of policies across various use cases for better security.

Another feature to look for is a secure self-service cloud-based portal where users can register, retrieve, and respond to encrypted emails, eliminating the need for admins to create user accounts.

To effectively meet compliance, security, and governance requirements, the email encryption platform must have a policy engine that defines how messages will be encrypted based on key message attributes such as keywords, message content, and sender or recipient location. Another feature to aid compliance and governance is full message logging and tracking, aiding auditing and forensic investigations.

Echoworx delivers a comprehensive set of critical features and capabilities that can streamline email-based business processes that incorporate confidential information. The flexibility of the Echoworx platform supports a plethora of use cases that require encrypting email messages. For example, the platform supports eight separate delivery methods: web portal, S/MIME, PGP, PDF, PDF attachment, Office file attachment, ZIP attachment, and TLS with fallback. The flexibility in delivery choices provides more control over how messages are sent and received, ensuring that Echoworx can secure most email communication workflows.

In addition, Echoworx offers seven authentication options, which can be easily configured based on policies or the preferences of the sender or recipient, including OAuth-vetted social connectors, self-registration, shared-secret passphrases, single sign-on (SSO), system-generated verification codes, passwordless authentication that leverages a user device’s existing biometric technology, and multifactor authentication.

The Echoworx Email Encryption Platform also offers comprehensive message tracking, providing detailed information about delivery, an email’s opening by the recipient, message recalls, and notifications about any errors or exceptions. Such extensive tracking provides full visibility, helps in maintaining compliance, and gives more control to senders.

Echoworx enables the seamless migration of PGP and S/MIME encryption to the cloud by integrating all PGP or S/MIME activity, including auto key generation, digital signing, and signature verification in one fully managed platform. This enables organizations to leverage the scalability, reliability, and economics of cloud-delivered solutions while eliminating on-premises costs, reducing workarounds, and consolidating message encryption on a single platform.

Other compelling benefits of the Echoworx Email Encryption Platform include support for 28 languages, multiple branding options for email messages and secure portals, and access via any device, anywhere.