It is common for small businesses to have tight budgets. If a business uses free or cheap web email services, it can save money. However, using such services can turn out to be costly in the long run. A sole data breach can single-handedly destroy a business. That’s why investing in a secure email is always a great decision. But what is a secure email service?
Secure email services are email services that prioritize security and privacy. They usually use end-to-end encryption. This means that only the person sending the email and the person receiving it can read it. A secure email service will not be able to eavesdrop on your text messages.
In this article, we will give you a more clear picture of such a service. We will discuss the features that make an email service truly secure. If you are a small business owner, this article will be a great resource to help you secure your email.
What is a Secure Email Service?
Secure email is essentially regular email with some added security features. The technology behind the scenes is ultimately the same, so you are already familiar with using a secure email provider. You still get a lot of spam when you send emails to named addresses that start with @ and a domain.
As a result, anyone can say they offer secure email. There is no dictionary definition of the word “secure.” Besides, even though they do not meet the standards, most of the major email providers, like Gmail and Outlook, would still call themselves “secure.”
Most service providers that use this term do a lot more than just use two-factor authentication and require strong passwords. Safety, in this sense, does not just mean keeping other people from getting into your account. It also means protecting your data and identity.
An email service that is truly safe can not read your conversations. They should ideally be located in a place where intelligence agencies are not allowed to share data with each other. In an ideal world, the technology would be based on open standards so that security could be “crowdsourced.” It is not fair for the service to make a profile of you, show you personalized ads, or keep metadata.
As a result, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and most other popular free email services are not thought to be truly safe. Data security-wise, a secure email provider is “better” than Gmail, but you will not get Google’s features and deep integrations. Choose the better option based on your priorities.
Who Is Secure Email Designed for?
Anyone who needs to send susceptible information or documents and ensure that they reach the right people can use secure email solutions. Usually, though, businesses that deal with private customer data on a regular basis and need to keep it safe use secure email.
You can send information to customers, coworkers, and business partners using secure email solutions without putting it at risk.
Why is Secure Email Important?
The email was created in 1976. It is now one of the most popular ways for businesses and people to communicate with each other, be it formal or informal. However, it was not designed with the safety of private networks in mind.
The companies that offer email services have added safety features over the years. Yet, it is still possible for people to read, change, or intercept sent emails because of the way the email network is built.
Furthermore, the quantity of private information being sent has increased as people depend more on email. Criminals can take advantage of this expansion in many ways.
- Email is the main source where data incidents happen.
- The most common reason for email data incidents is email errors.
With a secure email solution, these threats can not get through, and emails will always reach the right people safely.
Features Associated with Secure Email
Secure email services are just like email, but they keep your information safer. Secure email usually has the following features:
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End-to-End Email Encryption
The process of encrypting an email and any files attached to it makes it impossible for unauthorized people to read it. Before an email is sent, it is encrypted on the sender’s device. Once it gets to the recipient’s mailbox, it is decrypted. This is called end-to-end encryption.
End-to-end encryption keeps email data safe. That’s because even if a message is intercepted, no one can get to it.
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Email Authentication
To use secure email, you need to use email authentication methods to prove who you are. These methods can do a number of things, such as:
- Account authentication is a way to make sure that your email account is even safer when you log in.
- Prior to receiving encrypted messages, recipients must prove who they are through recipient authentication.
Multiple ways are available in secure email solutions to make sure that email recipients are who they say they are. These include SMS codes, identity documents, and question-and-answer challenges.
For regulatory reasons, this is especially important for companies that need to show that information gets to the right people.
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Email Revoke
When you use email revoke, users can not read an email after you have sent it. In situations that often lead to data breaches, like sending a message to the wrong person, email revocation can keep data safe.
While email recall is limited and depends on certain conditions, like an unopened message, secure email solutions can provide full email access management features. Users of secure email solutions can block access to any message at any time, even after it has been opened. This is called “full email revoke.”
This gives regular email users peace of mind. If they do make a mistake, there is a way to take it back, even if it was the worst mistake possible.
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Email Audit Trails
Secure email solutions can provide comprehensive logging and reporting capabilities to assist with auditing and regulatory compliance. They keep track of all of the recipient’s actions with messages, such as opens, downloads, and revoke calls.
Senders can see how their emails are doing and choose to be notified when their messages are read. For many transactions, like those in the financial services industry, confirmation of delivery is a must using audit trails.
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Email Risk Warnings
Secure email services can let senders know how dangerous their messages are before they go out. The answers to emails will be analyzed for patterns that are often connected to private information using a solution, and safety steps should be suggested.
Some solutions also ask senders to check the email addresses of the recipients twice before pressing “send.” These alerts can help stop important problems and teach users to be careful with outgoing data at the same time.
FAQ
Q. What Is the Difference Between Regular Email and Secure Email?
Ans. Here’s a table comparing regular email and secure email:
| Feature | Regular Email | Secure Email |
| Ensures email delivery | Yes | Yes |
| Additional security options | No | Yes |
| Minimizes human error | No | Yes |
| Focus on processing sensitive data | No | Yes |
| Adapted security options | No | Yes |
| Ability to block incorrectly sent emails | No | Yes |
| Ability to block incorrectly sent files | No | Yes |
| Ability to block incorrectly sent recipients | No | Yes |
| Options to prevent errors | No | Yes |
| Ability to reverse errors | No | Yes |
Q. Can I Trust Secure Email Providers With My Confidential Information?
Ans. Secure email providers use advanced encryption to make sure that your private information is always safe. However, you should always check the provider’s privacy policies and terms of service.
Conclusion
Having a secure email can give you an upper hand in the fight against breachers and hackers. Besides, the ability to reverse email-related mistakes can turn out to be a game changer, as human errors can happen anytime.
But you can’t just cherry-pick any email service that claims to be the safest. Features like encryption, authentication, and risk warnings are extremely vital. Besides, opting for a top spam filtering solution can also be handy, as numerous breaches happen through spam.
Crown Computer’s spam control solutions can be the best bet here for small business customers. All of our email spam filters let you fine-tune the filtering based on user or domain aliases. Hence, you can make rules that are specific to each user and the whole company. Explore our solutions today.