With so many publicly disclosed instances of online fraud and identify theft, why don't more people encrypt their email messages?
That's the question the software developers at Encrytomatic LLC asked themselves recently while developing PDF Postman, an email encryption add-in for Microsoft Outlook that leverages the PDF format as a secure vessel for email messages and file attachments.
In surveying nearly 100 customers and prospective customers, the team zeroed in on the top reasons that that cause people to "take their chances" when sending important documents by emails.
Though often aware of the legal and privacy risks of their actions, the respondents to an informal survey expressed the hope that their particular email message would be cloaked in anonymity, lost in the sea of billions of emails that are sent daily and would not be intercepted. Despite the existence of software that can "sniff" transiting emails for sensitive data patterns, there remains a common perception that unencrypted emails are safe because there are so many of them sent each day.
The most often cited reasons for not using email encryption software were: 1. Perceived complexity of implementing and maintaining email encryption , 2. Cost factors of acquiring the software, and 3. Imposing a burden on a recipient, especially a client.
The top cited reasons why someone would send sensitive data in an email without encrypting it, beyond not perceiving the need to do so, were: 1. Recipient said it was ok to send the information by email, 2. Time sensitivity for delivery (i/e steps to apply encryption would take too long), and 3. Not having a practical option to perform encryption or not understanding how to do so.
For people who used email encryption, their top cited reasons for doing so included: 1) Strict employer requirements for encrypting data and a corresponding fear of losing their job , 2) Fear of having to publicly disclose a breach (embarrassment), and 3) an awareness of risks of not protecting the data.
Although the survey was not scientific, it underscored the anecdotal perceptions of the development team and will be used to guide the user persona and marketing of the PDF Postman email encryption add-in for Microsoft Outlook.
PDF Postman already addresses many of these issues. As an affordable email encryption solution targeted mainly at small and mid-sized businesses, PDF Postman does not use complex public keys or certificates. It integrates tightly with Microsoft Outlook to allow originators of sensitive emails to protect them in a way that is broadly compatible and less burdensome on the recipient. PDF Postman leverages the fact that AES-128 and AES-256 bit encryption algorithms are a part of the popular PDF file specification. This means that virtually any standards-compliant PDF viewing utility can open a PDF file encrypted by PDF Postman.
PDF Postman works around the way people use Microsoft Outlook to send email messages. It takes the email message and converts it to formatted PDF document image. File attachments are embedded in the PDF file and may be extracted; for example an Excel spreadsheet file attachment could be removed from the PDF file and then opened in Excel.
Because virtually every device has a PDF view, or can easily download a free PDF viewer, using PDF as a vessel to send important email messages simplifies the process for both sender and receiver.