What organizations and individuals can do to ensure a foolproof system for protecting emails?
Email messaging vulnerabilities are always a concern, mostly for business enterprises, and it is no less for individuals who might feel helpless to see their private and confidential messages and data compromised. The dark web is known for its clandestine trading in personal data, most of which are accessed by cybercriminals. Often we see reports of hacking of networks of reputed global organizations that, despite their best efforts in ensuring security and protection of their data, become victims of data theft. Ensuring safety on the internet is highly challenging, and emails are the favorite targets of cybercriminals who steal information and data for clandestine use.
Various vulnerabilities of the email system
Whether at an organizational or individual level, protecting emails is the topmost concern of users. Emails are soft targets of cybercriminals because of various vulnerabilities in the messaging structure. Which email service provider you are using is an indication enough to hackers about your system’s vulnerability, and they might break through it. If there is a lack of protection in the service provider’s data server, your emails are at as much risk as it can happen if there is no data encryption at the recipient’s data server. Moreover, if the recipient’s device is compromised, you have nothing left to protect your message. Even if the recipient ensures adequate protection, forwarding that email to someone exposes it to new data theft risks.
Protocols for email protection
Encrypting messages is the only protection, and according to the international protocols, encrypting email messages in transit and end-to-end protection are the accepted practices. You can learn more from Trustifi, a third-party service provider in email encryption about extended email protection.
Transport Layer Security (TLS) – The first layer of protection of emails is offered by the email service providers like Google and Microsoft that use the technique of Transport Layer Security to protect a message from the point it originates (sender) to its destination (recipient). The security system is robust, and users rely on the service providers’ reputation so much that it gives an impression that all emails sent across all other platforms are equally safe, which is far from true. Interestingly, the protection of the service providers is only applicable as long as the messages are in transit. Cyber criCybercriminalsl access the users’ devices to steal data. This highlights the need for ensuring end-to-end-encryption of the email message by third parties.
End-to-end encryption – The significant advantage of end-to-end encryption is that users are in full control of securing their messages until it reaches the recipient only who can open it. The protection is much more comprehensive and complete than TLS. The protection is available at every stage of delivery, and even the servers that transmit messages are unable to read it. It ensures complete protection of messages, including attachments, and it is almost impossible for cybercriminals to break the defense. The sender uses a public key to encrypt the message, which only the recipient can open with a private key.
The expertise of third parties plays a significant role in offering complete protection to your emails.
