Email encryption - password protect

Hi,

You can't stop someone from opening an email, but you could encrypt the payload so they cannot read the contents (only the metadata headers etc) without a key (password).

As an example, you could zip your message up and put a password on it, and the recipient needs the password to decrypt the zip file.

Not very user friendly, but you could do that.


If you ran your own servers, and so did your correspondent, you could ensure that all email transactions are encrypted between the servers, but not require a password to actually open the email (say).  Exchange will opportunistically do this by default (at least recent versions will).

If you are concerned that Google can read your emails, then yes - they can.  Whether they would, and in what way (human versus a program / algorithm for example), is another question of course, but they *can*.

Alan.

Hi,

You can try to checkout PGP or S/MIME.

If you need a hardware appliance, you can checkout Sophos Mail Appliance.


https://www.openpgp.org/software/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/MIME

There already is an industry standard called s/mime where both parties exchange certificates, or using Pretty Good Privacy.  Other than that you have to roll your own. With Office 365 you can use Content Protection where the user has to log into a website to view the message.

Hi,

I was just editing to say about PGP when Ricardo posted, so I won't repeat that again, but just to add that you can also use Addins to Outlook to add that functionality such as this (just one example):

https://www.encryptomatic.com/openpgp/


Alan.

Dear Author,

In Outlook you can definitely encrypt all of your outgoing emails.

Read this article which explains how to encrypt Outlook Emails in version 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/encrypt-email-messages-373339cb-bf1a-4509-b296-802a39d801dc

But for Gmail message, you have to install third-party add-ons to encrypt Gmail emails. But I would advise you to use Outlook for same

Thanks & Regards
Christ Harold
Software Engineer

Well when you think about it you do already enter a password before opening an email, sometimes twice.  Once when signing into Windows and possibly a second time when logging on to OWA or Outlook.  If further encryption is required there are a plethora of 3rd party encryption services both on-prem and in the cloud.  Personally I prefer a cloud option like Mimecast or Proofpoint.   The way these work is through the use of an "encryption gateway" outbound email is diverted to either by containing sensitive information or in your case every outbound email.  The recipient receives a notification email and a link to the encryption gateway where they must first register for an account and sign in to retrieve the message.  That's about as close to a password-protected email as you're going to get without using certificates.

Thanks for all the replies....  

After looking at the various options I think we are going to just zip all the sensitive information and password protect before emailing out.  

I liked the OpenPGP for Microsoft Outlook by Encryptomatic option but it posed 2 problems for us; not everyone uses Outlook (found out most use browser based gmail)   and the recipient need the software addin in order to decrypt the email.

They already tried Cisco Secured Email and Secured Google Mail.  Neither fully suited their needs.

So with all this, what would be a good zip/encrypt software to use?

Thanks

Everyone had good ideas but I think Arnold's suggestions of zipping and encrypting was the best for our situation.  
Alan, thanks for the information in 7-Zip. I gave you Assisted points for it and your comments on Encryptomatic Solution.

The Experts Rock!

Thanks!

Thanks April - Although zipping and encrypting was actually my first suggestion :-)