Before you can initiate solid email security, you first have to understand how the email system works (in 13 easy steps shown in this chapter). The system seems unappetizingly complex at first look. You send an email to your recipient through a long pathway of software, hardware, and connections (transmissions). Why is it necessary to understand it? Well, each step of the way is susceptible to a security breach (hacking). If you want security, you need to make sure you’re protected at each step. Chapter 4 analyzes the security vulnerabilities and defenses for each step in the path. But this chapter aims only to provide a simple outline of the email system.
This chapter goes from a list of the 13 steps in the pathway to a diagram, and then to more specific information on each step of the pathway.
This step-by-step outline illustrates that the email message you send to a recipient flows along as follows:
- Your email program
- Your computer
- Local Wi-Fi transmission (or network cable)
- Your local network
- Transmission across the internet
- Your email provider’s email server
- Transmission across the internet
- Recipient’s email provider’s email server
- Transmission across the internet
- Recipient’s local network
- Local Wi-Fi transmission (or network cable)
- Recipient’s computer
- Recipient’s email program
What may surprise you is that your email message typically goes across the internet three times and across local networks twice before it gets to the recipient. Wow! This provides more opportunities for hackers than you may have thought. So to get a more solid grasp of this email system, let’s consider these steps one by one in more detail.
1. Your Email Program
An email program is just a computer program. RMail calls it an email interface. The IT people know it as an email client. But I prefer to use the old-fashioned name: email program. Your email program might be Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Synacor Zimbra, or one of the dozens of other email programs that you can buy or obtain for free.
Your email program can be on your desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. Because of the difference in devices, your email program will be different for your desktop and laptop than it is for your tablet or phone, even if it has the same name.
In other words, an email program is simply the computer program you use to send, receive, and manage email.
2. Your Computer
Your computer is the device in which your email program operates, such as a desktop computer or a mobile device. In order to send email, your computer must be connected to the internet. Typically, your computer connects to the internet through a Wi-Fi network in your home, place of business, or a public place.
The most popular local networks are Wi-Fi networks implemented by Wi-Fi routers. Some ISPs provide proprietary routers that you must use. Others require you to purchase your own router at a computer store. Instead of a network cable connecting your computer to a router, your computer communicates with a Wi-Fi router via a wireless transmission.
Cellphones In the case of smartphones, the connection to the internet can be by a transmission over the cell phone system. Thus, the cell phone system becomes your local network, in effect. But cellphones can also use Wi-Fi for email transmissions.
Yes, some people still use routers to which computers are connected by a network cable; but such routers have fallen out of favor. Wi-Fi is simply much more convenient. Nonetheless, some enterprise networks still use cables too.</p>
2. Local Transmission
This is the transmission from your computer to your router. This happens in one of two ways. If you have a Wi-Fi router, this transmission is in your home or place of business, not via satellite and not on the internet.
If you have a router with network cable connections, there is no wireless transmission; the connection is over an actual network cable. This cable is your connection to your local network.
4. Your Local Network
Your ISP supplies you with an internet connection via a telephone wire, cable wire, or satellite transmission via a modem in your home or place of business.
You connect a Wi-Fi router (or a router that provides network cable connections) to the modem to create a local network. This description can mislead you, because some ISPs provide you with a combination modem-router; that is, instead of having two devices (two boxes) you have only one.
The router enables you to connect your computer to the internet along with all the other computers on your network in your household, your place of business, or a public place that provides Wi-Fi.
Note that if you are on an enterprise network, such as in a large business, your local network is the enterprise network.
5. Transmission Across the Internet
This is a transmission across the internet from your network to your email service provider’s email server. That’s a mouthful, so let’s simply call it your email server. That is, this is a transmission across the internet from your network to your email server.
Note that many enterprise network systems operate their own email servers. In such a case, your email doesn’t go across the internet; it simply goes through your local enterprise network to the enterprise email server.
6. Your Email Server
Your email service provider has a program in its computer (connected to the internet) named an email server. The email server sends email messages out across the internet to other email servers, and it also receives and stores email messages from other email servers on the internet.
When you send an email message, it goes to your email server, which instantly queues and manages the sending of the message across the internet towards its destination.
When your email server receives a message addressed to you, it stores that message in its database and waits for you (your email program) to connect to it to retrieve the message. Accordingly, your email server operates 24/7 so it can send and receive email at any time.
Again, your email server is actually your email service provider’s email server; and if you’re on an enterprise network, your email server typically is the enterprise’s email server.
7. Transmission Across the Internet
The next step in the path is the transmission across the internet from your email server to the recipient’s email service provider’s email server. Let’s call that simply the recipient’s email server. In other words, the transmission across the internet goes from email server to email server.
Last Six Steps
When the message gets to the recipient’s email server, the pathway of steps described in 1 to 6 happens in reverse and is listed as steps 8 to 13.
8. Recipient’s Email Server
When your message gets to the recipient’s email server, that server stores your message in its database awaiting a request from the recipient’s email program to retrieve messages from the server. One typically sets up one’s email program to retrieve messages from an email server every half-hour (or other time period) or manually. As soon as the recipient’s email server receives the request from the recipient’s email program, the server immediately transmits your email message to the recipient’s email program via recipient’s local network and computer.
Message Storage After the recipient’s email program retrieves a message from the email server, it may delete the message from the server, or may not. It depends on the program’s settings (made by the recipient).
9. Transmission Across the Internet
The recipient’s email server transmits your email message across the internet to the recipient’s network (or within an enterprise to the enterprise network).
10. Recipient’s Network
Your email message reaches the recipient’s local network, but it’s not home yet. The router routes your message on the local network to the recipient’s computer.
11. Local Transmission
The recipient’s router transmits your message to the recipient’s computer. This is a Wi-Fi transmission in the recipient’s home, place of business, or in a public place.
If the recipient has a router with cable connections, there is no wireless transmission; transmission is via a network cable.
12. Recipient’s Computer
Once the email reaches the recipient’s computer, it’s still not home yet. The computer directs your email message to the correct software. That software, of course, is the recipient’s email program.
13. Recipient’s Email Program
Finally, the recipient’s email program receives your email message and waits for the recipient to read it. In other words, your email message resides in the recipient’s email program until such time as the recipient looks at the list of incoming email messages and decides to open and read your email message.
Finally, the path of steps comes to an end.
Security Breaches
Again, why do we need to know the path? This path as explained above seems to be somewhat redundant with tech-speak in 13 steps. Nonetheless, each step is simple to understand, and you need such understanding to learn how you can make your email secure.
Each step in the path is susceptible to a security breach. Chapter 4 explains the risks at each step along the email pathway and proposes defenses you can make against potential breaches at each step. As you might expect, the risks and the defenses for each step are not the same. There is no practical silver bullet you can invoke (no one technique) to eliminate all the risks of hacking. Indeed, complete security requires multiple defensive services you can use for your email traffic.
On the other hand, you do not need 13 different defenses. Some defenses cover multiple steps. Many secure email service providers furnish only one service, an approach not adequate to cover all threats. RMail provides multiple secure email services that enable you to defend yourself against hacking from all threats.
Functionality RMail not only provides multiple security services but also provides increased email functionality, which enables you to duplicate off-line functions online. For instance, you can send an email with a contract attached, get a signature on the contract, and have the contract returned to you as a validly executed agreement, all done securely via email.
Summary
Sending and receiving email are easy procedures. But the transmission processes follow a more complex path than most of us realize. Each step of that path is susceptible to hacking. Armed with this knowledge, we can take precautions that make our email much safer from hacking.
