E-Mail Security: Who's Reading Your Mail?

How secure is your e-mail? If you're like most people, you probably think your communications aren't of interest to anyone else, much less worth the attention of an eavesdropper.

But consider

for a moment how often you send financial data, research, and other sensitive business information via e-mail. Then think about how it can damage your company if it falls into the wrong hands.

Regular e-mail travels in plain-text format across any number of third-party computer systems, which means that e-mail is exposed to anyone who cares to look at it. In addition, you could accidentally send a private e-mail to the wrong person, or someone could even forge your online identity and send a message with your name on it.

Secure e-mail can prevent these problems. Secure messages are encrypted on the sender's computer system, and they remain encoded until they arrive on the recipient's desktop. Secure e-mail uses authentication systems to prove who sent the message and to check the identity of the recipient. And ideally, a secure e-mail system should be no more difficult to use than regular, unencrypted e-mail.