What to Look for in a Secure Email Provider?

In expanding the use of email systems in the modern business world, the number of confidential data transmitted on the Internet is growing rapidly. As a result, the problem of automation and workflow protection is carried out through email. This article will consider the main criteria that the user guides when choosing a modern email service.

Information protection when using e-mail

Email is becoming an increasingly important element of everyday activities. In modern companies, virtually the entire amount of documents passes through email. As a result, businesses need specialists to adjust the email reliability to help employees use it properly, reduce the risk of deliberate or unintentional incorrect use, and ensure that official documents transmitted through email are correctly processed. As a result, the problem of automation and protection of workflow, which is carried out by means of email, becomes urgent.

Email boxes retain a vast amount of personal and work data (letters) and are usually attached to accounts on social networks, managers, cloud services, and more. Therefore, unauthorized access to the mailbox can have serious consequences, such as receiving confidential information, changing passwords to sites, accounts without their owners’ knowledge, accessing personal photos and videos, spam-sending on behalf of others, etc.

Basic requirements for a secure email provider

Email software implements the complex logic and integrates directly into postal clients (and postal servers) through specific mechanisms and interfaces. The essential features of a secure email provider include:

    • Software traffic protection and malware filtering;
    • All protection tools operate on separate hardware and do not create an additional load on your virtual server;
    • Protection against “listening” of traffic when accessing mailbox management through the use of an encrypted VPN tunnel;
    • DDoS protection at the data center level;
    • Increased priority for ticket processing by technical support;
    • Continuous monitoring of the health of resources with notification of the security administrator about detected violations;
    • The administrator is granted access only from a trusted network segment, access logs are stored for one year;
    • Access to mail from anywhere in the world.

The most secure email providers

ProtonMail and Tutanota are two trusted email providers that put security and privacy first. It includes supporting end-to-end encryption for protecting your identity by not logging in, asking for tons of personal information during registration, and providing secure methods to contact people who use “regular” email providers such as Gmail or Outlook. Each provider has the opportunity to send an encrypted message to any email address.

Increased security is achieved through convenience and functionality. For example, you may need a dedicated mobile app to access your email. In Gmail, the Google Assistant can help you get the information you need by scanning the contents of your Gmail inbox, but secure email services can’t because the data is encrypted.

In addition, the contents of your mailbox are encrypted on the server, which means that only you can read them. In the case of data leakage, your data will be practically useless since they are encrypted with a key whose hack will last forever. Cryptographic protection technologies are increasingly used to solve the safety of the information that is sent through electronic mail around the world.

Moreover, virtual data rooms are an excellent alternative to email systems, as they also ensure secure collaboration and file-sharing based on cryptographic protection.