Google Workspace is one of the world’s most popular email platforms. Although it is more than adequate for basic email correspondence, Gmail does not come configured to meet HIPAA email security requirements. To use Google Workspace in a HIPAA-compliant manner, you need to use a third-party connector to secure your communications.
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Frequently, we are asked to verify if a sent or received email was encrypted using SMTP TLS during transmission. For example, banks, healthcare organizations under HIPAA, and other security-aware institutions require that emails be secured by TLS encryption.
Email should always be transmitted with this basic level of email encryption to ensure that the email message content cannot be eavesdropped upon. To see if a message was sent securely, looking at the raw headers of the email message in question is easy. However, it requires some knowledge and experience to understand the text. It is actually easier to tell if a recipient’s server supports TLS than to tell if a particular message was securely transmitted.
To analyze a message for transmission security, we will look at an example email message sent from Hotmail to LuxSci. We will see that Hotmail did not use TLS when sending this message. Hotmail is not a good provider to use when security or privacy are required.
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Do you use email backup in your practice? Make a smart choice by comparing the backup policies of popular email solution providers.
Privacy concerns are constantly rising especially following the revelations by Edward Snowden. Now, the big question is “Do the popular email services in the US retain your data forever?” In order to find an appropriate answer, we examined the email backup policies of 7 popular providers.
Data breaches and privacy concerns make headlines for they have a direct impact on an individual’s private life. Going by the news of mass surveillance by government authorities, it is natural for you to be extra cautious about protecting your privacy. After all, nobody wants to get exposed although a bit of exhibitionism resides in each of us.
The US government is pressing technology giants to reveal what they have in their “box” (or your inbox). Apple reported that it received the highest number of security requests for data from the US government this year.
Considering the “attacks” from both the government and hackers, it is imperative for you to learn how these email services ensure that your data remain safe.
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We’ve written quite a lot in past FYI Blog posts about SSL/TLS certificates, the critical building block to secure communication on the Internet. We described what such certificates were, their use in securing the communications channel between a client (browser) and a server, different types of certificates and the pros and cons of using each.
Given the changes in the Internet landscape over the past five years, we feel it is time to revisit these topics. The technical details described in the earlier posts remain unchanged. What has changed, though, are the traffic patterns for HTTPS-based communications, additional vulnerabilities arising as a consequence and ways to mitigate these. This post will provide a general overview of certain changes in the Internet landscape over the past few years, while subsequent blog posts will describe some of the topics identified here in greater detail.
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