When communicating via the internet, your data is highly exposed to malicious attackers, state agencies, and spies. How do you put a stop to that? By using end-to-end email encryption only the intended recipient of the email will be able to read it.
Over the last few years, end-to-end encryption has become increasingly popular among individuals and enterprises because of the increased need to stop third parties from getting access to private email and files.
Dive into this piece to find out what you need to know about end-to-end encryption.
What is End to End Encryption?
End to End email encryption is a process of masking off the message or files contained in an email in a way that only the sender and the receiver can read the message, to block third parties from getting access to the email content. Here, the data is encrypted from the sender’s device and can only be decrypted and read by the intended recipient.
This provides internet users with the highest level of confidence knowing that nobody in between will be able to read their messages.
How Does it Work?
Also known as Client Side Encryption, end to end encrypted email requires both sender and receiver to have a private and a public cryptographic key.? The sender encrypts the message with his device using the public key of the receiver, and this message can only be decoded by the receiver using their personal and private cryptographic key.
Also, users can sign emails digitally using their private keys before sending them, thus ensuring that the sender of the email is legitimate.
With end-to-end encryption, both encoding and decoding of messages happen on the user’s end thus no third party will be able to read this message, not even the service provider.
What Makes End-to-End Encryption Email Different from Normal Email?
Information shared using end-to-end encryption is transported in code form that’s only readable to the sender and the receiver. Normal emails, on the other hand, are encrypted with data encryption such as TLS, however, they are easily readable to any third party that intercepts the email.
What Kind of Attack Do End to End Encryption Protects From?
End-to-end email encryption protects your emails from all sorts of third-party attacks such as internet fraud, man-in-the-middle attacks, hackers, malicious attackers, and spies.
What Emails Should be Encrypted?
Any form of the private or personal email should be encrypted on transmission. This includes any form of information that’s considered personal including health reports, PHI, and asset papers, among others. Apart from actual messages, stored and archived messages can also be encrypted.
How Can You Encrypt Your Emails?
Today, there are a lot of end-to-end email encryption providers. These companies create add-ins to our email application which make it possible for senders to encrypt emails and for receivers to decrypt them using private and public cryptographic keys.
Wrap up
End-to-end email encryption ensures your email messages are protected from any person other than the intended receiver. Also, the end-to-end encrypted mail that is digitally signed ensures the authenticity of the sender and guarantees that the message was not tempered in any way.