As an essential aspect of cybersecurity, email encryption, and archiving are both crucial for complying with various regulations and industry standards.
Apart from regulatory compliance, encrypting and archiving your emails can prove to be a great way to protect and store important data that is sent and received through regular email communications.
While encrypting your emails provides them with extra security to prevent any unauthorized access or use, email archiving is all about moving/storing important emails from your main inbox to different dedicated folders so you can retrieve them with ease whenever needed.
What is email encryption?
Email encryption is the technology of encrypting or protecting your emails with special passwords and keys.
Being password protected, they can only be opened, let alone read, by using the corresponding key that is conveyed to the recipient in some way or another.
Apart from password-based encryption, there are other types of email encryptions too that you can use depending on the nature of your business or email content.
Some of the common email encryption technologies that you can use include end-to-end encryption, which uses asymmetric encryption on both sides, and digital certificates for authentication and authorization.
Similarly, Transport Layer Security (TLS) is another encryption technology that secures the email server when the email is in transit.
Advanced email providers like Microsoft 365 also come with a built-in encryption feature to encrypt your emails before sending them.
What is email archiving?
Email archiving is the process of moving an email from your main inbox to separate or archive folders for easy retrieval and storage.
While optimizing the available space in your email inbox, archiving an email can help you organize important emails for easy access.
Most email platforms including Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, iCloud, and even default email apps that you may have on your device come with a built-in archive feature with intuitive icons and folders.
All you need to do is choose the email you want to archive and move it to the target folder by expanding the options or simply dragging and dropping.
That said, different email providers may have different steps to archive an email depending on your device or software, while serving the same purpose.
Importance of email archiving
- Regulatory compliance
As businesses continue to digitalize, the need to have specific laws and regulations has also picked the pace.
Many industries, especially the healthcare, finance, and legal services are being increasingly subjected to rigid laws and regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and FINRA.
What’s common across these cyber policies, though, is the need to have a proper and accessible record of all your important documents and email communications.
And that’s where, email archiving, as an easy way to manage and organize your emails comes into the picture.
2.Legal audits and investigations
With a well-organized inbox, you can easily access and produce all the documents required in times of legal audits and disputes.
Unlike manual search, which can get very lengthy should you have a large number of emails in your inbox, email archiving solutions let you search, access, and produce any email document instantly.
3.Data loss and theft prevention
Email archiving ensures that you do not lose any critical or sensitive information in times of cyber-attacks, system failures, and natural disasters.
Since archived emails can be saved or backed up across various locations, including on-site and off-site, such as the cloud, they can still be retrieved remotely to minimize downtime.
4.Storage/space management
By regularly archiving your emails, businesses can better manage the space available to handle large chunks of data that accumulate in your inbox on a day-to-day basis.
These include important business communications, as well as other sponsored or marketing emails that tend to flood our email inboxes.
The point is, by archiving all your important emails, whether new or old, you can be in a far better place to delete the rest of the inbox without having to worry about accidental deletions.
5.Business continuity
With all your important emails or sensitive information at hand, you can easily avoid any downtime or disruptions in your operations or services that can hamper your business and profits.
Importance of email encryption
1.Cybersecurity and privacy
Since encrypted emails cannot be accessed/read without the right code or key, it significantly reduces the chances of any leak or data breach.
Meant for the reader alone, email encryption can help you prevent all kinds of cyberattacks such as phishing emails and email tampering.
Plus, it provides much-needed privacy to correspondents when accessing the actual content of the email.
2.Sensitive data protection
Data protection of sensitive information such as customer identity, banking details, and intellectual property is another major aspect of email encryption for email compliance and security.
While enhancing the security features of an email with a special password, email encryption can further redact or scramble the main content of the email, making it completely undecipherable for even the most skilled cybercriminals.
Thus, significantly reducing the risks of data theft and unauthorized access.
- Regulatory compliance
Like email archiving, email encryption can also help you meet the various regulations and industry standards that are required to ensure proper online security for your clients and customers.
Some of the rather critical frameworks that require email encryption, include GDPR and CCPA.
That said, whether or not you have any specific policy to comply with, using email encryption and archiving is something you don’t want to miss if you want to make your job easier.
Tips to implement email archiving and encryption
- Go for reliable email archiving solutions that are remotely assessable and retrievable.
- Enforce proper email encryption policies at your workplace for all your employees.
- Train and educate your employees about the role of email encryption and archiving.
- Monitor and audit your email security and compliance regularly.
Final Words
While email encryption or archiving isn’t a must-have as far as legal regulations are concerned, they are still a crucial part of your cybersecurity as a whole.
From enhanced security and data protection to better storage and space management, from legal audits and investigations to seamless operations and business continuity, email archiving and encryption play a crucial role for digitalized businesses on any given day.
