“Secure email” can sometimes be a slippery term. What exactly does it mean? How secure is my communication really?
There are different levels of security and privacy for email, and there are also different ways of providing it. Some technologies focus only on specific aspects of the email process and others were created to defend against specific threats. For your own peace of mind and confidence, its important to know just what is meant when we at PSMail claim to provide secure email services.
A key aspect of security is protecting your email as it travels from you to the recipient. Many times, when a company advertises secure email it indicates that the connection between your computer (or email client) and the server is protected. That means that when you hit “send” your mail is safe as it makes its way to the email server, and incoming email is also safe as it makes its way from the server to your computer. This is called securing the end user interface. Many popular email services do this by providing security for authentication, but they fail to encrypt the emails unless the user manually enables the encryption. The other important aspect of secure email – one which many security services ignore – is communication that goes outside your local email system. These are emails that are transferred from your email system to another remote email system and then towards the recipient. Oftentimes, your email travels through several servers on its way from your computer to its destination, and all those in-between steps, as well as the final leg of the journey, may remain insecure or have a lower level of protection.
PSMail, however, provides comprehensive security for your communication. We use automatic encryption technologies – Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) – for all communications, whether incoming or outgoing and for both internal and external transactions. SSL and TLS provide end-to-end security and use an opportunistic method to protect communications traveling through remote email systems. The opportunistic method uses the maximum security possible when connecting to remote servers. The highest level of security provided by the remote system is taken advantage of by PSMail’s email system.*
When PSMail says that we provide secure email, we mean secure. We mean you can have peace of mind that your information will be kept private and safe.
* NOTE: When an email leaves our servers and heads towards the recipient, part of the security then depends on the end-user’s client and network.