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Encryption

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A15

IS-IT--Management
Nov 1, 2002
238
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US
What is the best way to have encryption on e-mails,
Our company deals with some sensitive information and I am looking to see if it is possible or recommended to encrypt all emails from our company.

Thank you for your response.
 
Can't tell you the best way. Just be aware that whatever you use, the recipient needs to have relatively the same thing in order to decrypt the emails.

For me, I prefer PGP because it's an open standard and more available to the world. With PGP, you can send a message encrypted with PGP, but the recipient doesn't necessarily have to have PGP on their end. They could have an open-source alternative and still be able to decrypt it as long as it conformed to the PGP spec.

You could use S/MIME (secure mime) which is supported natively in any recent Microsoft OS or mail server/client, but I think it tends to be more of a pain to set up and maintain. S/MIME requires you to get your certificates (used for encryption/decryption) from a certificate authority. Whether you manage that certificate authority yourself or trust in a third party (Verisign, Thawte) is your decision. However, S/MIME requires this. This is not the case with PGP. You simply load the client, then create your own key...you don't need to get a key from a third party certificate authority.
 
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