Want to send Send Encrypted and Password-protected Emails?
Professional communication has become easier with the help of email. Internal and external communication through them is probably the most widely used method in businesses of all sizes. Internal and external communication through them is probably the most widely used method in businesses of all sizes.
A financial consultant, for example, may be required to deliver the most recent audit reports to a company secretary. Similarly, you may need to send a sensitive report to someone by email. How do you ensure that such secret emails are sent to the correct recipients? The solution is to encrypt or password-protect your emails. In today’s post, I’ll show you how to simply send encrypted emails with password protection!
What is Email Encryption?
The process of encrypting an email involves combining its contents into a puzzle that can only be solved by you. Using a public key infrastructure (PKI), emails are encrypted and decrypted. In the form of a digital code, each individual receives a public and private key.
An accessible key server maintains the public key, along with the person’s name and email address. Emails are encrypted with this public key. If someone wanted to send you an email containing sensitive information, they would encrypt it with your public key. Emails are decrypted using the private key. It is kept safe and secure on the person’s computer, and only that person has access to it. The private key can also be used to digitally “sign” a communication, letting the receiver know it was sent by you.
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How to send confidential emails through Gmail?
You can send and open confidential or password-protected emails on Gmail. You can send messages and attachments in confidential mode with Gmail to help protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.
You can use confidential mode to set an expiration date for messages or revoke access at any time. The recipients of the confidential message cannot forward, copy, print, or download the email. So let’s get started and let see how we can send confidential Emails on Gmail
Steps to send confidential emails through Gmail?
Step 1:
First of all, log in to your Gmail account through your browser or in your App application
Step 2:
Once you open your Gmail account press or click on Compose like normally to write an email you can also include files that will also be password protected once you have done writing an email and files attached
Step 3:
Click over the button or toggle which says turn on confidential mode.
Step 4:
Now it will show us all these options regarding confidential mode. So here we can set an expiration for your email for example if you set an expiration date of 1 week then the receiver will not see the message after one week.
Step 5:
Now there is another option regarding the passcode if you want the receiver to have a password in order to open this email, you have to click over the SMS passcode.
In case you don’t want a passcode so click over on the SMS passcode and the receiver will not need a password to open the email.
Step 6:
Once you have done with your configuration you need to click over save once you set everything regarding your email click over send and then you do need to write the phone number of the receiver, in this case, the receiver will need to verify their identity when he will open the email.
How to open the confidential email on Gmail
Once you receive the confidential email it will show in all email sections and when you open the email it will show that the email was sent in the confidential mode and you will see the notification here in the picture which says to view this email you may first confirm your identity a one-time passcode will send to your phone number. Which is the phone number that you entered when the sender send you the email
Steps to open the email
Step 1:
Click on send passcode
Step 2:
You will receive the passcode at your phone number.
Step 3
Type the passcode and then you will be able to open the email
How to send confidential emails on Outlook
sending confidential emails is essential for protecting certain private data when communicating through emails but with Outlook it is super easy to accomplish.
Once we encrypt the email message outlook converts the readable plain text into scrambled cipher text and only the recipient will be able to decipher it only though if he has the private key that matches the public key that was used to encrypt it. So follow the below steps to send confidential emails
Steps to send confidential emails through Outlook?
Step 1:
First, you need login to Outlook, and then you need to create the new email message
Step 2:
Once you have done writing the email move to the options tab on the top menu.
Step 3:
At the down menu from the option, you will see the option Encrypt. If we open the drop-down menu from the encrypt you will see that we can encrypt the email.
Step 4:
Here you can see the options Encrypt Only, Do not Forward, confidential, and Privacy from the dropdown menu for encrypting, and from here you can set your permission which one you want to use
Step 5:
If you want to use Encrypt only click on “Encrypt only” and straight away at the top of the message you will see “This Message is Encrypted”.
Other options:
- If you select DO not Forward: It shows recipient can read this message but cannot forward, print or copy content the conversation owner has full permission to their message, and all replies
- If you select Confidential: it will show that the sensitive business data that could cause damage to the business if shared with unauthorized people.
- If you select Privacy: It shows you will show a greek national id card.
How to send password-protected Outlook attachments
If you want to send password-protected Outlook attachments for this you will use a third-party app which is called MAPILab. This product will allow to an archive of specific attached files automaticlly and encrypt them with a custom password
Steps to configure and send password-protected Outlook attachments
Step 1:
Download the application from the link: https://www.mapilab.com/outlook/attachments_processor/
Step 2:
Once the app is downloaded and installed the new tab MAPILab will be added to the Outlook ribbon
Step 3:
In order, to set up the automation rule you will go to the setting tab and click on MAPILab>options by default the rule is configured to process incoming messages. We will uncheck it and select “Use this rule with outgoing messages” instead.
Step 4:
In the message filter section, we will specify the parameters of outgoing messages that require attachment protection. We will indicate keywords in the message subject or attachments files Name.
Step 5:
Under the archive section, we will select
- archive message attachments
- archive attachments when forwarding a message
- and create password-protected archives
Step 6:
Next, we will specify the password in the default password settings. If ask password for archives in outgoing messages is enabled the password will be requested in order to pack and unpack the attachments in outgoing messages.
Step 7:
Or if use default password for archive in outgoing messages is enabled you will able to specify the default password for archives attached to outgoing messages now the configuration is complete.
Step 8:
Once the configuration is completed. Click on the new email message and compose it using the subject keyword previously specified to trigger the rule and then select the files to be attached.
Step 9:
now when we click send button our rule will lunch and automatically place the attachment into a zip archive and password-protect it
Difference between Encryption and Password Protection
By encrypting email, the contents of the message are transferred from plain, readable text to cipher text (algorithmic codes) that cannot be decoded by anyone except the intended recipients.
Email messages are protected in this way so that they cannot be viewed by unauthorized recipients. The attachments to our emails are routinely password-protected so that only authorized recipients can access them.
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