Are your email messages secured?
Introduction:
As you all already know messaging is not a secure platform, evermore anyone who has an administrative access to your mail server can gain unlimited access to your personal data. Email messages are sent as clear text are can be easily intercepted by untrusted entities that want to lay a hand on any valuable data.
It is common for people to wonder is it safer to put all of your email data in a hosted environment e.g. your ISP or even to use hosted services like Microsoft, Yahoo or Gmail or to install a local mail server inside your company ,the best example is those who use Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes.
There is no simple answer for this question since in both cases those who manage the mail infrastructure has unlimited access to your data.
So what is the answer for sensitive data stored on the mail server and that is sent as clear text to mail recipients – The only solution is to use message level encryption.
What is message level encryption and how to use it?
There are many ways to use message level encryption or MLS such as S/MIME standards or PGP. Since S/MIME is a free standard that is supported on all messaging platforms and clients we will focus on that.
S/MIME is a way to encrypt your messages and to sign your messages to prove your identity, S/MIME also provides a way to prove data integrity, which is that the data was not changed since it left the sender mailbox.
Since S/MIME uses Public Key Infrastructure or PKI we need a PKI encryption keys that are based on RSA algorithms and to embed those in a S/MIME PKI X-509 certificate. This certificate can be enrolled from most of the Certificate Authorities in the web after providing your identity with no charge.
After enrolling the S/MIME certificates you will be able to sign your emails, in order to encrypt email to another recipient you will need to send this remote recipient your Public Key – that is embedded on your certificate and to receive from that recipient his own certificate. After that certificate exchange you will need to install the remote recipient certificate on the remote contact object in your email clients.
This could look like a competed process to an inexperienced user.
Is there any simple free solution
Yes there is, a company called U-Btech is a leading provider of a PKI solutions, The Company provides a simple client called ESIEmail that provide the user with the entire S/MIME infrastructure solution.
The ESIEmail client has a very simple installation; it extends Outlook 2003 or 2007 capabilities by automatically enrolling PKI S/MIME certificates installing those and by adding menus for signing, encryption and for managing email permissions.
The ESIEmail infrastructure also provides the mail user with a way to publish his Public certificate to other users and by providing him Public Certificates for his recipients.
The ESIEmail slogan is “Singe Click Encryption”.
How to start working with ESIEMail Protector in 3 easy steps:
1) Download the product from the following location: http://www.u-btech.com/mailprotector/downloads/download.htm
2) Extract the files and double-click the Setup.exe file.
3) Follow the on screen instructions and close Microsoft Outlook if required.
4) Start Outlook, the “Activate my ESIEMail Account” should appear.
5) Type in your information including your desired password for your “ESIEMail Protector” account and click on “Activate”.
6) You should be getting an email address from the following address: Registration@U-BTech.com (Make sure you check you Junk-Email folder for the email).
7) Click on the activation link in the email to verify you are the rightful owner of the registered email address.
8) Your default web browser should open and you should see a message saying your activation was successful.
9) Close your web browser and close Microsoft Outlook.
10) When starting Microsoft Outlook again you should see U-BTech’s ESIEMail Protector Toolbar on the main Outlook window and in each new email message you create.
After installing ESIEmail the outlook 2007 will be extended with those following buttons on the new message menu:
Now you can start sending encrypted email and keep your sensitive data secured.
Enjoy!
Ronen Gabbay – Microsoft Regional Director and Senior Security & Messaging CTO Hi-Tech College Israel
roneng@hi-tech.co.il