The multiple award-winning Secure E-Mail Gateway from SEPPmail now has an interface to GLOBALTRUST. For the first time, users of the popular Swiss solution for e-mail security have the possibility to retrieve their encryption and signature certificates from an eIDAS-qualified provider in Austria.

The topic “email security” has recently become an ongoing issue for many companies. The Corona pandemic has taken digitization in business one step further. Home offices were established virtually overnight. Physical meetings and face-to-face conversations took a back seat. But not only video conferencing tools, also the good old e-mail experienced a real boom in the everyday business communication.

E-mails will continue to be the most widely used means of communication in the business sector for a long time to come. They were a popular tool for cybercriminals even before the pandemic; In recent months, however, phishing attacks, identity theft and malware have once again increased significantly. For most people, today’s fake emails are factually indistinguishable from an original.

 

Secure e-mail traffic

Another scenario in which potential threats exist is unsecured transmission. Unencrypted electronic messages can easily be intercepted and read by third parties. It is not only under data protection aspects that sensitive customer, client or patient data should (or must) be protected from unauthorized disclosure – companies are well advised to transmit confidential information exclusively in encrypted form.

Does an e-mail really come from the designated sender? Is a third party reading it? Both of these uncertainties can be resolved immediately by using signature and encryption certificates. If an e-mail is signed, the recipient knows that the message really comes from the designated sender. This is based on a signature key that only the verified sender possesses. This key is inseparably linked to the identity of the sender by a certificate – if necessary, with further attributes, such as affiliation to a company and department. Functions, powers of attorney, or academic degrees can also be entered. The correctness of this information is ensured by a trust service provider, such as GLOBALTRUST, by means of special verification procedures. GLOBALTRUST works on the basis of European legal regulations for trust services and is audited annually. Furthermore, an undamaged signature proves that the content of the e-mail has not been intercepted and modified in transit. If both parties to the communication have a certificate, the message can be encrypted using the latest cryptographic algorithms so that only the – guaranteed genuine – recipient can read it.

Signed e-mails thus form the basis for trustworthy electronic business transactions and contribute enormously to the enhancement of one’s own image. GLOBALTRUST deliberately refrains from using certificates with a low security level, i.e. those where only the e-mail address has been validated. It is known from the SSL area that almost 95% of all phishing attacks are committed with the help of a so-called domain-validated certificate. The same danger situation prevails with S/MIME, i.e. in the e-mail scenario.

Fully automated certificate handling in SEPPmail

The SEPPmail Secure E-Mail Gateway enables the fully automatic encryption, decryption, and signature of e-mails in the usual e-mail program (Outlook, Notes, Mail, Thunderbird etc.). Encrypted e-mail communication is also possible with recipients who have no encryption software and no key (patented GINA procedure). The gateway handles the entire lifecycle of the certificates fully automatically, from request to revocation. With the direct connection to the certification authority of GLOBALTRUST, another publicly trusted CA is now available.

For many companies, the pandemic was the reason to complete digitization initiatives that had been put off for a long time. The demand for corresponding security mechanisms has increased enormously. What is needed are holistic concepts that seamlessly integrate publicly trusted certificates into a central management system and ensure highly convenient and simple use. This is the core requirement of the solution. Because here, you can be sure to communicate confidentially and authentically without the user’s intervention.