I have not written a custom President’s letter in the past couple newsletters and it is time. Not that I have not had things to write about, but just haven’t made the time. This month I would like to tell you about a feature I have recently come across at the need of one of our customers – secured email. In the ‘old days’ (like the last couple years) securing email came in a couple flavors: Did that email really come from that person? and Encrypt the email so the only one who can read it is the one who it is destined for. The first issue could be resolved by getting a ‘’certificate’ that you could attach to your email. The certificate is typically managed by a third party that could be queried to make sure the person is who you thought they were. The second issue (encrypting the email) was a little more difficult. Keys needed to be exchanged and specific software had to be used by the parties that exchanged emails. This was only applicable when the two parties were going to exchange several encrypted communications.

In looking for a solution for our customer, I came across two new ways of accomplishing encrypted email. One is called PDF Postman. It is an add-on to Outlook. When installed, there is a button when you are composing an email that requests the email to be encrypted. When you get ready to send the email it prompts you for a password to encrypt the email with. Then after sending the email, you need to get that password to the person you are sending to. You can choose to send that same password to the same user on further emails. The customer will receive an email with an attached PDF that can only be read if the password is entered. Pretty cool, pretty easy, pretty cheap… $50/user.

The second solution is a Microsoft solution that is a ‘cloud-based solution’.

Customers who have an Exchange server can get an ‘add-on’ that will send messages that are ‘tagged’ with some indicator that a message should be encrypted. The tag informs the add-on that the message should be encrypted and sent to a third party (Microsoft) where it is held. Another message goes to the intended recipient who is told to go to the Microsoft sight to retrieve their email. The recipient must then ‘log into’ the Microsoft site (i.e. they need to register an account if they do not already have one) to retrieve their email. As you can see, it is a little more work for the person who receives the email, but it has an added feature in that the person can respond to the original sender with a secured email. Note that is only possible with PDF Postman when the responder also has the PDF Postman (or some other program) installed on their system. This solution is paid for by the month and is very cost effective… less than $5/month.

This is a lot to take in so feel free to contact me via email or call the office if you have further questions.