As we progress with technology around the world, the importance of privacy and data protection has become a major concern. With so many hackers and unwanted risks involved online, it has become highly necessary to use an email encryption service for your business besides several other protections against cyber risks.
Stats on number of emails send and receive – Statista
Back in August 2013, around 3 million Yahoo email accounts were compromised. It was a serious flaw in Yahoo’s email service as the level of encryption was not on par.
Today, high-quality email encryption is among the top priorities to ensure privacy and data protection for large businesses. This is because email is still the best communication medium for businesses to communicate with other businesses or consumers.
Today we will discuss why you need to use email encryption service for your business emails.
So let’s get started.
Risks Involved When Not Using Encrypted Email Service?
The main risks when an email may be breached is when sensitive and private content is sent via emails such as financial data, or login information. Another common issue is spamming phishing emails or malware through your emails.
Hence, when you send or receive emails, you have to keep in mind to,
- Make sure you send out encrypted emails
- Make sure your email server accepts encrypted emails
Let me explain.
When you send out an email, it usually goes through 3 specific network stops:
- First, the email goes to your email server. This is where your email server detects and verifies if the recipient’s email is valid. Then it sends out your email.
- Second, the email goes to your recipient’s email server. At this point your email sent is compared to the recipient’s email server settings and data is transferred to the email service (by decrypting it and making it compatible with the encryption settings of the recipient’s server).
- Third, the email is viewed by your recipient directly on any device.
The process is vice versa for you and whoever sends you emails.
Now, the risk is mainly in the second and third stages.
On the second stage, when you are the sender, if your recipient’s email server is not supported for encryption, the email can be intercepted.
When you are receiving, if you are not using email encryption service, then even if the sender sends an encrypted email, the data is at risk while the email is transferred.
The third stage is also a risk as the device where the email is viewed might have spyware. So if the email is not encrypted, it can often be accessed without authorization.
Basically, without encryption, email can be accessed by hackers or spyware.
How to secure your emails ?
After you have got yourself a professional email ID and when you send emails, you can’t do much if the recipient’s email service does not support encryption. But what you can do is make sure you are sending out encrypted emails.
And, you also need to make sure your email server accepts encrypted emails.
Plus, do ensure you are viewing the email in a protected device. It should not be accessible by anyone unauthorized and should have protection from malware and spyware.
Hence, it is only logical to use an encrypted email service to maximize data protection.
How Encrypted Email Service Works
Emails are not protected by any sorts of protocols such as SSL. Email encryption tools encrypt the contents and attachments of an email before sending it out, which is then decrypted when the recipient views the email.
Now, there may be different types of email encryption services such as web-based encryption email services, secure email hosting services, and email encryption features built into email clients.
How do you encrypt an email ?
However, there is no standard architecture for encryption. Most encryption software involves a gateway software that uses conditional encryptions based on policies.
Basically, here you can choose which emails, and what type of contents will be encrypted. But it will often require you to install an encryption client to your PC.
The web-based email encryption services have their own web-based interface to handle the encrypting and decryption of emails.
Generally email encryption involves 3 layers of protection:
- An encrypted connection from your email provider – to prevent unauthorized access to your network when data is transferred.
- The whole email itself as encrypted data – so that even if someone manages to access the email, the contents, attachments, and the texts will be encrypted and not usable.
- Encryption of stored, cached, and archived emails – in case hackers manage to access the server, the stored data there will be unreadable as well.
Hence, there is almost no chance of losing valuable data.
When should you encrypt an email?
Not all businesses require email encryption service, but it is highly recommended that if you do operate business communication via email, then you should use an email encryption service.
You surely need it if you handle sensitive information from your clients or consumers via email. For example, login credentials or password set-up links for your website after registration.
If you are in the healthcare industry, then you will need to use an email encryption service that is HIPAA compliant, i.e., it has extra protection that meets the HIPAA guidelines. For example, Paubox is specialized in providing HIPAA compliant encrypted email services.
Other guidelines such as CJIS, CFPB or GDPR also highly recommend using encrypted email service.
A common policy on all business guidelines is that, after assessment, if you find that
- electronic Personal Health Information (ePHI)
- Personal Identifiable Information (PII)
- or Nonpublic Personal Information (NPI)
maybe at risk, then you should implement encryption.
Now, here is a list of 7 email encryption services that you might wish to look into.
What email services are encrypted?
| Sr. No | Email Encryption Service Provider | Website |
| 1 | Egress – Advanced Email Encryption | Visit |
| 2 | Virtru Secured Email | Visit |
| 3 | Hushmail – Protected Business Email Service | Visit |
| 4 | Paubox – Dedicated HIPAA Compliant Encryption | Visit |
| 5 | Tutanota – Secured Email Service | Visit |
| 6 | NeoCertified Email Encryption | Visit |
| 7 | Encyro – Super Secured Email | Visit |
Email Encryption Services Providers
When you search for it, you will find tons of email encryption service providers. However, here is a list of 7 email encryption services that you can trust.
1. Egress – Advanced Email Encryption
Egress is one of the most trusted email encryption services out there.
- It meets protocols and policies that make it compliant for
- HIPAA
- CCPA
- GLBA
- GDPR
Plus, they have in-house experts that help with email encryption set up for several industries which includes
- Financial Service
- Healthcare industry
- Legal firm
Egress is noted for using contextual machine learning encryption service, which means, it’s constantly evolving and getting more and more secured.
2. Virtru Secured Email
Virtru has excelled recently while providing an encrypted email service that is compliant with almost all business guidelines and policies.
It is compliant with
- CCPA
- CJIS
- FERPA
- GDPR
- HIPAA
- ITAR
- NIST
- CMMC
It gives a full security solution to encrypting Gmail and Outlook emails, and GoogleDrive encryption.
3. Hushmail – Protected Business Email Service
Hushmail provides email service with encryption for small to medium businesses.
Apart from a great email service, Husmail recently became HIPAA compliant and has become among the top secured email services out there.
Besides Healtcare centers, several private lawyers, and local non-profit organizations also prefer using Hushmail due to it’s easy, secured email service.
One specialty this email service provides is that after you sign up, if you need any custom encryption, you can simply contact their customer care and they will set it up. So you will have control as well.
4. Paubox – Dedicated HIPAA Compliant Encryption
Paubox is currently the most popular email encryption service among healthcare centers.
It is one of the few email services that are HITRUST certified and is fully HIPAA compliant. It’s encryption is pre-built according to HIPAA, so that you do not have to configure any encryption.
It has a few special security measures such as Inbound name masking and scaning all emails multiple times. Plus, they have in-house experts on HIPAA, who constantly monitor to ensure all requirements for encryption are met.
5. Tutanota – Secured Email Service
Tutonato, starting as a private email encryption service, has now developed to become well-known for providing quality encrypted email service for businesses.
It’s end-to-end encryption feature is super secured and it also offers white label email service. This means that other than the business itself, no one else will know what email provider is being used, making it more difficult for hackers to try any decryption.
It is GDPR compliant and allows you to add custom encryption so that you can make it compliant as per your requirement.
6. NeoCertified Email Encryption
NeoCertified is one of the recently emerging email encryption services.
It provides solutions such as secure email solutions, encrypted email API, and HIPAA compliant encryption. It allows integration to Gmail, Outlook, Edge, and GoogleDrive for encryption.
NeoCertified provides security measures that meet the requirements for other businesses as well such as Law firms, Insurance agencies, or financial services.
7. Encyro – Super Secured Email
Encyro is among the new email encryption providers that is growing rapidly.
It has done it’s research and has introduced 16-layer protection to email service. It’s security measures are very high and is compliant with policies such as
Encryo makes sure to get audited annually for HIPAA and SOX compliance and has proven to provide the highest level of encryption for secured email services for financial, medical, or insurance agencies, which require top-notch security.
Conclusion
When you handle customer data, it is always important to value their privacy no matter what business you run.
Hence, make sure to use email encryption whenever you communicate via email with sensitive or personal data.
If you have faced any email security issues in the past, do share with us.