There are two main areas to consider when it comes to email security. These are security in transit and security at rest. An additional concern is identity validation. It is very important to make sure that your customers trust the email you send to them. A little IT maintenance will help your business a lot. Here are some ways that will ensure that your email is secure and trusted.

At rest security usually involves protection of all stored versions of your email content. If you need to send confidential information or if you need your customers to send said details to you via email, both of you should concur on a resolution for encryption at rest. This can be done by encrypting the entire email itself, or by including the confidential information in an encrypted attachment, so that it can only be read if you have the password. Just remember to provide the password in another way aside from emails.

Email transit security protects messages as it moves across the internet, from the moment you hit send to the moment it arrives at your recipient’s inbox. Encrypting email in transit is a responsibility shared by all email providers. It can only work the best if everyone in the delivery succession takes part in the process. Transport Layer Security (TLS) is the technology used. It makes email content unreadable as it moves through the internet. It does not, however, protect it when it’s stored. The authenticated encrypted email will arrive at the recipient with no red lock, and no “?” for the sender.

Authentication is very important for marketing emails and other automated emails sent to customers via a third party service. Email authentication lets your email provider know that a message is from the address it claims to be from, not spam or phishing email. For sending marketing emails, use either SPF or DKIM to certify your identity as the sender. An SPF record specifies the hosts that are allowed to send messages from a given domain. DKIM is a signature that lets emails to be electronically signed in a way that can be substantiated by recipients using a public key.

email security