Day 10: Improve email confidentiality

YOUR ASSIGNMENT TODAY

Improve email confidentiality.

WHY DO IT

Critical data is only so secure if all your e-mail is sent "in the clear." Encrypting email will help keep communications secure, especially in this age of smartphone email.

HOW TO DO IT

Select an e-mail encryption solution (we have a whole list here). Make sure it answers these questions: Can you scan e-mail for malware or unauthorized content if it is encrypted? Can you index and retrieve e-mails based on content if that content is encrypted (for example, S/MIME allows indexing and retrieval based on e-mail headers and subject fields, but not on the message body content)? What about key management and recovery? Any solution without a recovery solution is bound to lose important, mission-critical information that can't be recovered.

Then, test it on a few of your patient users before implementing a mass deployment. It will keep your data secure and your users (and managers) much happier.

RECOMMENDED READING

"Protecting e-mail confidentiality," Infoworld.com