The Internet has become an integral part of our daily lives. It has opened an ocean of new opportunities and has become a vital tool for sharing and exchanging information. Millions of users across the world send and receive emails everyday. With the sheer volume of emails, cyber criminals are capitalizing on the opportunity for illegal activities.
From customer support to financial records, it is key that you protect your confidential emails and take security measures to keep them private. In this article, we’ll discuss the most important aspect of Internet security— email encryption. We’ll also guide you through simple steps to encrypt your Outlook 365 emails.
How do Hackers Get Access to your Confidential Emails?
A hacker will usually send an email posing as a legitimate business organization. The email will contain a link to a phishing website that asks the victim to enter their debit/ credit card details, login credentials or other confidential information. The hacker will then use the stolen credentials to gain control over the victim’s computer system, illegally spy on their activities, steal confidential information, perform fraudulent monetary transactions or other sorts of illegal activities.
If the organization has not taken adequate security measures to protect their information, an attacker can use different tactics to intimidate them into paying up a huge amount of ransom. Regardless of the payment, there is no guarantee that the victim will be able to get back their data.
Consider another scenario. If an organization is not encrypting emails of their employees, data is transmitted in plaintext. As a result, cyber criminals can secretly intercept communication between the two parties (sender and receiver) and easily gain access to confidential information. You can prevent such a scenario by encrypting your Office 365 emails.
What is Encryption? How does it protect my Outlook 365 Emails?
Encryption is the best way to protect your emails against Man-in-the-Middle Attacks. It converts your plaintext email messages into ciphertext so that unauthorized people or cyber criminals cannot read your data even if they manage to fraudulently sniff into your network traffic. End-to-end encryption ensures your data will be readable to only you and the authorized recipient; no one else.
OpenPGP is an encryption protocol introduced by Phil Zimmermann in 1991. The protocol uses a public key for encrypting your email content into ciphertext. Only the person with the private key (the authorized recipient) will be able to decrypt your email messages to the plain text and read it. The entire data conversion process is fully automated.
How to Setup Office 365 Email Encryption?
Encryptomatic OpenPGP is a third-party add-in that encrypts and decrypts your confidential emails. The add-in is free-of-cost for personal use, NGOs and independent journalists. If you’re a business user or using it for non-personal activities, you will have to purchase a license.
The steps are as under:
- Close Microsoft Outlook 365, if it’s already open.
- Download and install the Encryptomatic OpenPGP add-in on your computer.
- Open Outlook 365 and launch a new email.
- Click on the Encryptomatic OpenPGP tab on the Ribbon interface and select Encrypt.
- Write an email, enter the recipient’s email address and send it.
Make sure to send a few test emails to determine whether Encryptomatic OpenPGP has been successfully integrated with your Outlook.
