GNSC Blog

One of the most effective ways to enhance email security is to use encryption.  Encryption in theory makes the email unreadable by anyone other the sender and receiver.  The downside is that there are few easy ways to add encryption to email without adding a third-party product like MailMarshal Secure Email Server, CertifiedMail, Borderware or PGP.  These are all great products and do an excellent job of keeping your email secure.  But they cost $$$. 

There is an easy way to add a simple level of encryption to your email without going through the expense of installing and configuring a full featured encryption solution.  It’s called TLS, Transport Layer Security.  TLS is essentially SSL for email.  What it does is create a secure channel through which email can be sent and received between servers and clients.  In most cases, it’s a matter of “turning it on” since it’s already a feature in most mail servers and email clients. 

What does TLS give you?

TLS provides a level of security as your mail is transmitted through the Internet.  It’s like creating a tunnel between you and the mail server as you exchange mail.  It makes it harder to snoop on your mail as it moves across the dozens of connections on the Internet. 

What doesn’t TLS give you? 

TLS does not provide security beyond the connection layer.  That means that if you are sending an email to person A’s email server,  beyond the server, there is no encryption.  Someone in Person A’s company can still snoop on it. 

So, TLS is something everyone should consider.  It’s just a wise option.  If you need more than TLS, for example if you are sending sensitive information or are required by law to have encrypted email, give us a call.  We have several solutions that can be matched to your business needs.

The Blackberry Enterprise Server connects your internal email server with your Blackberry users.  However for companies who have hosted mail environments, who cannot afford a BES server, or have users on the Blackberry webclient, there is no central function to control their blackberry population.  There is a solution.  4 years ago, GNSC began using MailMarshal SMTP as a way of managing their internal Blackberries.  With MailMarshal SMTP you can create dynamic policies that allow Blackberry users to receive, send and manage emails on a non-BES platform. 

MailMarshal SMTP can do much more than just stop spam, it can email-enable applications, act as a systems monitor, control key functions in other systems and help assess the “temperature” of your employees attitudes during times of stress.  Contact me today if you would like to run you ideas past us.  We are the MailMarshal SMTP experts.