Do you need to encrypt internal emails?

One of the golden rules of cybersecurity: if it contains sensitive information, send it with an encrypted email.

It’s safest to encrypt all your emails, including internal emails. The reason is because it’s common for emails to spend time on a hosted network and on your host’s mail server, which are not always as secure as you might need them to be.

Internal email, internal network?

It should be clarified that an internal email, a correspondence between a sender and recipient who belong to the same organization, can be sent along an external network.

For example, the sender could send an email from the office to a recipient working at home. In this scenario, an internal email is not traveling along an internal network to reach its destination, and it could be vulnerable.

Protecting data in transit

Protecting data in transit means you are securing your data as it travels via email from one endpoint to another. On public networks, it can be difficult to ensure emails will be encrypted in transit, which makes them vulnerable to cyberattacks. It’s also difficult to ensure that all endpoints are properly set up for email encryption, unless you subscribe to an end-to-end email encryption service.

This allows both the sender and the recipient to encrypt and decrypt emails with ease. It also protects the email in transit across whatever network it uses to reach its endpoints.

Essentially, end-to-end encryption removes the need to rely on external networks for security. Instead, anyone in your organization who has the end-to-end email encryption service installed can safely send internal emails from anywhere.

Protecting data at rest

“At rest” data includes emails that are stored in your mailbox. When a mailbox is offline and still connected to a server, it’s possible that a cyberattacker could gain access to the contents inside. The best way to protect yourself and your organization against this is to ensure you have additional layers of security, often provided by an email encryption service.

Essentially the mailbox itself should be encrypted for maximum security, and access points should be monitored to protect against cyberattacks.

This also applies to archived data, which is often stored on a cloud-based service. Just like the email mailbox, the cloud itself should be encrypted and closely monitored for adequate security.

The bottom line

Email encryption is an imperative security measure in order to safeguard and maintain your organization’s sensitive information and data. Internal emails can be just as vulnerable to cyberattacks as any other kind of email, so it’s best to encrypt them. Implementing end-to-end encryption services will allow everyone in your organization to communicate securely and easily.