How Encryption Protects Your Office 365 Email

Email encryption is a revolutionary feature of Office 365 that allows you to encrypt and decrypt email messages for enhanced protection. Email encryption isn’t a new feature, but it’s an essential feature everyone with a valid Office 365 license must use.

An encrypted email is far more secure than an unencrypted one. Why? Because email encryption allows us to protect email messages by locking the contents of the messages through a secure layer that prevents unauthorized access. This eliminates threat actors from spying on your messages and stealing crucial business data.

That’s one of the reasons why everyone should be using encryption with Office 365. This guide will go deeper into the subject and outline the need for Office 365 message encryption.

With all that said, let’s begin.

How Email Encryption Works in Office 365?

Email encryption in Office 365 works through transport rules. Users can set rules that state how encryption is applied to email communications. These rules apply to both outgoing messages and inbound messages.

Moreover, the destination email address isn’t important, as you can send encrypted messages to Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other email address providers. Once you set the transport rules, only the intended recipient can view the contents of an encrypted message. The benefit of using encryption is that you prevent security breaches.

In addition, encrypted emails are difficult to breach, given the Office 365 email encryption capabilities. In Office 365, there are three encryption options; OME, IRM, and S/MIME. Unfortunately, not all encryption options are available for your Microsoft subscription.

For example, all licenses and plans have the basic Microsoft Outlook encryption capability, while advanced encryption is available to users with the Azure Information Protection Plan 1.

How Email Encryption Protects Your Office 365 Email?

We mentioned that email encryption works through transport rules. Admins can set the transport rules and allow users to send messages that match the rules. If a message matches a transport rule, the email message is automatically encrypted.

Each user is given a private key used to encrypt and decrypt messages. Recipients also receive a public key should their email address be added to the transport rule. A recipient’s public key will be made available to the sender. Once the recipient receives an encrypted email, they can decrypt it using a private key.

This tells us that security settings are put in place that prevent unauthorized users from viewing the contents of a particular message. Judging by that, we can take a few benefits of email encryption in Office 365 and how we can use it to protect our professional Office 365 emails.

Email Encryption Prevents Security Breaches

Security breaches are far too common nowadays. From common phishing attacks to delay ransomware, email is the preferred medium for most of today’s cyber threats. It’s not uncommon for employees to be targets of a mass phishing email campaign, which aims to cause a data breach and steal confidential information.

With Office 365 email encryption, you get an added security layer on top of existing security features in Office 365. The aim is to improve cyber defenses and ensure email messages go to their intended recipients.

That way, you’re maximizing safety and ensuring no threat actor is spying on your email communications.

Email Encryption Portecs Confidential Information and Privacy

One thing we didn’t mention regarding Office 365 email encryption is the fact that the feature protects the sender’s identity. When you send an encrypted message, only the recipient can view the sender’s contents and information.

If someone gained access to the email, they wouldn’t gain any information on the sender or recipients. The email message would look like a blank page with no information on it. That way, we can send confidential information without risking our identity being found out.

There are some cases where such precautions are necessary. The only way to gain the privacy necessary is to use Office 365 email encryption.

Email Encryption Prevents Sensitive Information From Being Misshandles By Unathozied Users

When sending an unencrypted email, there is always the possibility of someone printing, forwarding, or copying the contents. One additional safety benefit of email encryption is the automatic mail flow rules that prevent unauthorized users from tinkering with the encrypted email.

Given the numerous encryption options, you can modify message security and apply different encryption options to enhance email protection. One of these options prevents unauthorized users from tinkering with your email messages.

How to Encrypt Email Messages in Office 365?

To encrypt message contents, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:

• Open a new email message;
• Select “Options, “ “Permissions,” and choose the encryption option;
• From the list, you can choose “Do Not Forward,” “Encrypt Only,” “Confidential/All Employees,” “Contoso — Customer Ready,” and “Highly Confidential/ All Employees;”
• Send the message.

Conclusion

Email encryption is a valuable feature in Office 365 that benefits senders and recipients in more than one way. Ultimately, encryption is a safety layer that enhances email protection by allowing us to send encrypted email messages.

Given that Office 365 provides customers with their own dedicated encryption server, businesses are also benefiting financially from it.