Securing an email, text messages, and other file items is much important in today’s life. No one will want someone would see their emails, messages, or any other files.
Keeping this thing in mind, the email companies providing more security to their customers if they are using their services. By the time they are updating their policy to provide more security to their customers. So the user will send their emails and any other attachments fearlessly.
Therefore, we will talk about security in outlook email. Outlook offers more security to their client while sending an email.
It offers three methods to encrypt email in outlook, including the latest OME option. OME option doesn’t require installing security certificates and lets you send email to external recipients like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or any other free webmails.
So today, we will discuss those three methods which can encrypt our email more securely. Hence you will understand which method you should follow to encrypt your email in Outlook. So let’s start with how to do this:-
Encrypt email using Digital IDs Certificates(S/MIME)
To use this encryption in outlook email, you and the recipient must use outlook or a S/MIME compatible email application. You cannot use this encryption to send an email to any free webmail users, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or iCloud, etc.
You and your email recipient both must install and share encryption certificates to see each other’s email. Normally this encryption is useful to send email to government agencies or enterprises that use Outlook and have Certificates setup.
This setup is much expensive. Let’s start with how to use this encryption in our email.
How to Encrypt Email in Outlook
- First of all, an email encryption certificate must be installed on your outlook and share with your recipient.
- Your recipient should have also installed an encryption email certificate in Outlook or other S/MIME compatible email applications.
- To encrypt email in outlook using S/MIME certificates, click on File on the menu bar. Now click on Options to open the options menu.
- A new outlook options window will open. Now select Trust Center.
- Under the Microsoft Outlook Trust Center, select Trust Center Settings.
- Under the Trust Center, select Email Security on the left side.
- Now again, a new window will open. Under the Digital IDs (Certificates), click on Import/Export.
- A new window will open under Import/Export Digital ID, browse your file. Typically the certificate file extension will be a .pfx Enter the password associated with that certificate and hit the Ok button.
- You may get a popup window informing you of the security level that is set to Medium. Let it as default and hit on the Ok
- Now click on the Ok button to close the Trust Center
The setup process is done, the only thing that is remaining is to encrypt our email and send it to your recipient.
- Now we will start composing a new email. Click on the Home tab and click on New Email.
- A new compose message window will open. Now click on Option on the menu bar.
- Now you will see an icon on More options.
- Then a new properties window will open. Now select Security Settings.
- Now Settings Properties window will open, now check on Add digital signature to this message and click on the Change Settings You can see which certificate is being used for signing the message. The certificate you recently imported should be there under the Change Security Setting window. Then click on the Ok button and then Close to close the Property window.
- Now send the message to your recipient.
Office 365 Message Encryption (OME)
The Office 365 Message Encryption allows you to send an encrypted email to any email address. In OME message encryption, no need to install any encryption certificate to send an email. This option works only if you use an Office 365 email account ( Exchange Account ).
You need to install Outlook as part of the Office 365 Subscription. You cannot use this encryption option on Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016, or Microsoft office one-time license purchase.
To view the encrypted mail on the recipient side, the recipient will have to perform a couple of extra steps each time. Basically, the recipient will have to request a code on another email.
Once the code arrived, the recipient will have to enter that code manually into the box. After that, the encrypted message will display. Here is how we can perform it.
How to Encrypt Email in Outlook Office 365
- Open your Office 365 Subscription application, and start composing a New Message.
- Once the compose message window is opened, ensure that the Encrypt button should be Enabled, not greyed-out.
- Now open the Outlook application, the version that you installed as a part of Office Subscription. And start composing a new email in outlook, and click on the Options tab on the menu bar.
- Now an Encrypt option you will see on the menu bar hit on that. Now finish composing your message and hit on the Send button to send your email.
Outlook Email Encryption Add-ins
This is the best way to encrypt your email using email Encryption Add-ins. You can send an email to any recipient ( any email address, including free webmail user ) whether the recipient is using outlook or not. This is a low cost or even a free option to encrypt your email.
To use email encryption add-ins, you need to download a third-party app that provides an encryption add-in for your outlook. To install this app, go to https://apps.encyro.com and click on the Download button. Once the download is finished, run the app, and it will take a few minutes to set up. You will receive a successful message once the add-on is installed.
After setting up these things, follow the below steps
- Now start or restart your outlook app. To verify the installation is succeeded, click on the home tab. You should see New Secure Email or click on the New Email, and under the message tab, you should see the Secure Send
- Now compose your new email by clicking on New Secure Email or by clicking on New Email. If you choose New Email, then after composing the new message, you can click on the Secure Send button to send your encrypted email.
- How the recipient will access your email:- Once the message got delivered, the recipient will see the message with the body and the Access Now
- Once the recipient clicks on the Access Now button, they will be redirected to a webpage that shows them the secure message.
- On the page where the recipient gets redirected, typically, a time will be mention there. After that time period, the message will automatically get expired.
- The sender can change the number of days, after which the message get expire.
To get access to your secured email for indefinite access, you can set a password. For security reasons, the message gets automatically deleted after a few days.
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Conclusion
So, this was all about how to encrypt email in Outlook. With this guide, you can encrypt your email according to your convenience. If you have Digital IDs certificated, you can encrypt your email using a digital signature.
Or you have an OME subscription, you can encrypt your email using the default encryption method. If you don’t have both, then you can go for add-in encryption.
