Why You Need to Encrypt Your Emails – HR News

Posted on May 29, 2020

Online security, certainly personal cybersecurity, is an area that doesnt bother most people too much because the chances of something going wrong seem slim. However, when something does go wrong, you will kick yourself for not taking simple precautions that could protect you to a greater degree anybody who has had to clear their computer of malware will tell you it would have been easier to just get antivirus protection. Well, with 90% of hacks using email as an entry point, you might want to think about giving yourself some protection in the form of encryption.

What is Encryption

Simply put, encryption is the process of encoding a message in a way that only authorized parties can access it and non-authorised parties (like hackers) cannot. In the world of email, not encrypting your emails is akin to not putting a letter in an envelope. This may be fine for the equivalent of a post-card, but with fewer people communicating via email for personal use (instead migrating to instant messaging), the emails that you do send are likely ones that you wouldnt want a hacker to access.

Why Does it Matter with Email?

Encrypting your emails matters because it keeps the vast majority of hackers from intercepting your private electronic communications. Part of the process involves authentication on the receiving partys end, which means that encrypting is not just a way of obfuscating information you wouldnt want hackers to read it serves as a first line of defence for protecting yourself against identity theft. If you communicate only with encrypted messages, a hacker that is trying to steal your identity would need to steal your private encryption key to make any progress at all. This makes identity theft far more difficult and is a precaution that is well worth taking. Whats more, it is easy to set up.

How Does it Work?

Email encryption can use various different ciphers, from Open PGP to AES to Proofpoint encryption. The most common encryption involves two keys a public key and a private key. A private key is unique only to you; it should be kept under maximum security and not shared with anybody. Your public key is free to be given to anybody and can even be made completely available online. If somebody wants to send you a message that only you can see, they can encrypt it using the key that you make available publically. The only person that will be able to decrypt that message will be you by using your private key. If anybody intercepted that message, they would just see a massive block of random characters that wouldnt make any sense. Similarly, when you send somebody an email, you can use your private key to sign the message. The recipient can check your private key and be sure that it is from you.

How Often Should You Encrypt?

Put yourself in the shoes of a hacker: if you accessed a mailbox and found 990 personal and mundane emails that werent encrypted, but ten that were encrypted, you would likely put a lot of time and effort into decrypting those ten, as they may contain valuable information like credit card numbers. If you, however, saw 1,000 encrypted emails, you would likely be put off. Even if you tried to decrypt one, it would probably be something that would not be worth the time and effort (imagine taking days to decrypt a message that just says yes, will do). As a result, you should encrypt every email that you send: its easy to do and an excellent preventative against cyber identity theft.

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Why You Need to Encrypt Your Emails - HR News