Chapter 9
Message-Level Encryption

RMail Inbox auto­mat­i­cal­ly encrypts your email for trans­mis­sion to your email serv­er. This cer­tain­ly low­ers the risk of hack­ing but does not min­i­mize the risk. As men­tioned in Chap­ter 5, this is an incom­plete secu­ri­ty mea­sure because you have no con­trol over how the recip­i­ent process­es their email. Only by using a process that encrypts email for the entire path between you and the recip­i­ent can you min­i­mize the risk of hack­ing.

If you’ve nev­er had a migraine headache, try­ing to under­stand encryp­tion is good way to get your first one. It’s a com­plex field with­in the dig­i­tal realm pop­u­lat­ed by high-lev­el math­e­mati­cians and élite dig­i­tal spe­cial­ists. Just to under­stand how to imple­ment encryp­tion for email between you and a recip­i­ent is one of the most com­pli­cat­ed task you might face in your use of email.

RMail Message-Level Encryption

For­tu­nate­ly, you don’t have to under­stand or learn any­thing. RMail Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion takes care of it all for you. This is not the auto­mat­ic encryp­tion fea­tured in RMail Inbox and RMail Web. You must choose to send encrypt­ed email for each mes­sage that you want to send with this hack­proof method of encryp­tion. It doesn’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly.

Encryp­tion Terms  As men­tioned in Chap­ter 4, RMail uses the tech­ni­cal term RPX for this type of encryp­tion. It’s a 256-bit AES encrypt­ed (com­mer­cial strength) PDF processed in such a way as to be con­ve­nient to use with email. In this book I use the term Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion to describe it.

RMail Mes­sage-Lev­el Encryp­tion Cov­ers the Entire Email Path

You choose a pass­word for the recip­i­ent to access the encrypt­ed mes­sage. You then trans­mit the pass­word sep­a­rate­ly to the recip­i­ent. You might do this by sep­a­rate email. More secure would be by phone, instant mes­sag­ing, or anoth­er one of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tions out­side the email sys­tem itself.

Your email and any attach­ments are encrypt­ed on your com­put­er. They remain ful­ly encrypt­ed until they reach the recipient’s com­put­er. The recip­i­ent then uses the pass­word (you sent) to see the unen­crypt­ed email mes­sage. It’s sim­ple, bombproof secu­ri­ty. Although a hack­er might inter­cept the encrypt­ed mes­sage, the mes­sage is unread­able. There is an infin­i­tes­i­mal pos­si­bil­i­ty of a hack­er see­ing the infor­ma­tion pro­tect­ed.

But RMail Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion makes it even eas­i­er. If you choose not to pro­vide a pass­word to your recip­i­ent, RMail Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion will pro­vide the pass­word for you. The way this works is that recip­i­ent receives an email mes­sage with instruc­tions on how to retrieve the pass­word from the RMail serv­er. The recip­i­ent then access­es the serv­er, gets a pass­word, and uses the pass­word to open the encrypt­ed mes­sage.

If you sim­ply send one email mes­sage or an occa­sion­al email mes­sage to one per­son, let­ting RMail pro­vide the pass­word is your most con­ve­nient option. But if you send encrypt­ed emails to some­one on a reg­u­lar basis, it’s more con­ve­nient for you and for the recip­i­ent to use the same pass­word that you pro­vide over and over again. Over and over again doesn’t mean for­ev­er, but it means for an extend­ed peri­od of time until it’s pru­dent to change it.

Or, you can let the recip­i­ent decide what pass­word to use. They can cre­ate their own RMail pass­word. Once they do, their pass­word will over­ride a pass­word that you or the sys­tem cre­ates for them.

More Con­ve­nience  In RMail Inbox, RMail Web, and the plug-ins, you can set it up so that all your email is sent Mes­sage-Lev­el encrypt­ed. This can get expen­sive, how­ev­er, as RMail charges for each email mes­sage encrypt­ed.

Compliance

If you’re wor­ried about com­pli­ance, RMail encryp­tion com­plies with HIPAA (Health Insur­ance Porta­bil­i­ty and Account­abil­i­ty Act) and oth­er com­mer­cial and gov­ern­men­tal encryp­tion pro­ce­dures. RMail returns a reg­is­tered receipt record for proof of encrypt­ed deliv­ery for each mes­sage. This sat­is­fies any com­pli­ance audit.

It Doesn’t Get Any Better

As men­tioned at the begin­ning of this chap­ter, encryp­tion is a com­plex top­ic. The fact that this chap­ter is so short and that this encryp­tion is such a pow­er­ful means of secu­ri­ty should be a strong clue to you that the RMail Mes­sage-Lev­el encryp­tion ser­vice buys you a huge amount of con­ve­nience while at the same time pro­vid­ing max­i­mum secu­ri­ty. For the utmost in email secu­ri­ty and sim­plic­i­ty, it doesn’t get any bet­ter than this.