Tech

Email with encryption: Why is it necessary and are there real risks of hacking?

Email encryption is an important part of ensuring business communications on a professional level. It’s important for both the sender and the receiver of messages. Compromised data is just as dangerous to the person writing the message and hoping to transmit it securely as it is to the person receiving the information. Robust protection against cybercriminals prevents data breaches. 

The experts at Reply have put together a detailed guide on how to avoid the risks of intruders reading, information. And, in general about what email with encryption is and how to implement powerful encryption that makes the content of emails inaccessible to attackers.

How high the risk of data loss is

Data loss during the transmission of information via email is unfortunately widespread, especially in the unsecured segment. Since 2013, analysts estimate that more than 13 billion messages have been stolen. Estimates alone say that the value of the stolen information could be nearly $4 million. And that’s just a rough estimate. Data leakage can only be estimated with the passage of time and the discovery of abuse.

The average time to detect a hack or data theft is about 200 days, and the average time to contain it is 69 days. 

Email encryption is a preventative measure that can be taken to secure businesses and fend off cybercriminal attacks at the onset. In this way you can create a high-quality and reliable system of “digital defense” of a commercial company.

How data is encrypted

The two main types of mail data protection protocols remain S/MIME and PGP/MIME:

  • S/MIME is built into most OS X devices, iOS, and used in Apple’s major email services and Outlook;
  • PGP/MIME is based on a decentralized model and was developed to solve the security problems associated with plain text messages.

When information is subject to encryption, it becomes a mixture of unreadable and unrecognizable data with an illogical structure. Because of this encryption, someone else cannot open, much less understand the meaning of the received or transmitted data. Sent messages can only be opened and read by the person to whom the message is addressed. When the letter is delivered to the recipient, it can be deciphered and transformed so that the content becomes readable and comprehensible to humans.

Data encryption is becoming a necessary part of secure and effective business communication. Such data can be used for dialogue between companies and counterparties without the risk of financial and organizational loss.