Email Security
Email Security
Email Security:Today email is so widely used that it has become the default means of communication so it is important to maintain security of Email.
- Email is transferred over the Internet as clear text that can be conveniently intercepted and archived by various parties including your company, its ISP, the backbone network providers, the recipients ISP and your Recipients Company and desktop computer.
- In fact, email has often been likened to the use of the postcard in conventional postal systems: it is open to being read or tampered with during transmission, and it might not even actually come from the person who sent it.
There are two main strategies for making your email secure and private:
- Use email encryption software to encode your messages, which are then decoded by the recipient after delivery. Even if a message is viewed in transit by someone else, they will not be able to decipher it. Email encryption software can also be used to digitally sign a message to guarantee it really did originate from the apparent sender. Two of the most widely used email encryption systems is called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions).
- Use a secure connection system between your own machine and the server.This protects all forms of information – for example passwords – passing between a workstation and a remote server, not just email messages. It prevents against anyone ‘snooping’ on your connection’s network traffic, although offers no protection on information once it passes beyond the secure connection. One of the most widely used forms of secure connection system is known as SSL.
