If you spend any time on the internet at all, there’s no doubt that you’ve come across at least a few online scams. Perhaps it was someone posing as your bank or mail carrier, or even worse, pretending to be someone you know. If you’re using email for most of your business correspondence — which you likely are, given that a few hundred billion emails are sent each day — then you’re at an even higher risk for email fraud.

What’s particularly worrisome, is that today’s e-criminals aren’t harmless cyberpunks like the ones from the movie “Hackers.” Cybercrime is a global industry that isn’t going anywhere any time soon — and as hackers become more threatening, so do their extortion tactics. As a business owner or professional, protecting sensitive information is one of the most effective prevention strategies you can have in your security arsenal to defend against data breaches. The easiest way to secure your business? It’s with email encryption.

But what exactly is email encryption, and why should your business prioritize it? In this guide, we’ll break down email encryption in a way that makes it easy to understand, so you can learn how to keep your sensitive business data secure, no matter who you’re emailing.

What is email encryption?

Email encryption is the process of making contents of an email unreadable to prevent access from unauthorized users. Encryption happens seamlessly in the background, using specific algorithms and cryptography to secure the email message and any included attachments. Encrypting your emails effectively turns your messages into a code, or ciphertext, so no one can decipher except the intended recipient. 

There are two main types of email encryption:

  • End-to-end encryption (E2EE): Ensures that only the sender and receiver can read the message. Even email service providers can’t access the content. Proton uses E2EE throughout its suite of products, and even free users benefit from Proton Mail’s end-to-end-encryption.
  • Transport layer security (TLS): Encrypts emails in transit between email servers but doesn’t protect the content once it reaches the inbox. Email providers like Gmail use TLS, meaning that anyone at Google can read your emails without your knowledge. TLS also leaves your email messages more vulnerable to hackers who can access your inbox and read your un-encrypted emails.

Further, there are two main types of E2EE encryption protocols:

  • Pretty Good Privacy (PGP): Created in the ‘90s, this program was one of the first free encryption tools available. PGP can encrypt emails, text messages and files and (despite its lackluster name) is widely considered to be unbreakable.
  • Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME): This is the Internet Engineering Task Force standard for encryption and is used by most free email providers today. Gmail and Outlook offer S/MIME encryption for paid business users but do not offer E2EE encryption in their free plans.

Why should your business prioritize email encryption?

It’s crucial that your business protects personally identifiable information (PII) like financial data and health records. Depending on your industry, it may be important for your business to use email encryption to avoid litigation in case a client’s PII is leaked or hacked. Email encryption can protect your business in a myriad of ways. It can:

1. Protect sensitive information

Businesses regularly send confidential information, such as financial data, contracts, client details, or intellectual property, via email. Encryption scrambles this information so it’s private and secure from hackers or unauthorized individuals.

2. Prevent data breaches

A data breach isn’t just expensive, it can mean the loss of your customers’ trust and your business’ reputation. Encrypting emails helps reduce the risk of security and data breaches by making intercepted emails and attachments unreadable.

3. Comply with regulations

Many industries must comply with strict data protection laws, including GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).

Under these regulations, email encryption is often a compliance requirement. Failure to encrypt sensitive information can result in severe penalties and legal intervention if the right steps haven’t been taken to secure email correspondence.

4. Reduce phishing

Businesses always have to be on the lookout for phishing and hacking attempts. Encrypted emails reduce the chances of phishing attacks, since hackers are unable to break ciphertext or access the keys needed to read it.

Encrypt your email with Proton

You don’t want to become another expensive cybercrime statistic. With Proton Mail, our secure business email for companies of all sizes, your business can automatically protect its data around the clock, comply with any necessary regulations, and create better relationships with your clients who know their data is safe. 

Implementing email encryption for your business isn’t just a good idea, it’s a necessity. With Proton for Business, your company’s data belongs to you — and your clients’ information is always safe and secure. 

Based in Switzerland, Proton is protected by the world’s strongest privacy laws. And Proton Mail is just one part of your business’ cybersecurity strategy. With Proton for Business, your organization can access emails, files, calendars, passwords, and VPN anywhere using Proton’s suite of products. 

If you’re ready to be in control of your organization’s data, sign up for Proton for Business today.