When Should You Use An Email Encryption Gateway?
Tuesday, September 14th, 2021An email encryption gateway is a great way to protect sensitive emails for HIPAA compliance. You probably know just how important encryption is for sensitive data, as well as information that is protected by law, like ePHI. However, embracing these protections can sometimes be challenging. Gateways that rely on opt-in encryption put your company at risk, because employees may forget to encrypt protected health information.
Email encryption gateways like LuxSci’s Secure Connector automatically encrypt all outgoing emails, drastically reducing the risk of breaches caused by human errors.
What Is An Email Encryption Gateway?
By default, email is incredibly insecure. Protecting it requires additional effort, and it is easy for employees to make mistakes. The main purpose of an email encryption gateway is to encrypt outgoing emails. Some common ways to trigger encryption are:
- by using keyword prompts
- pushing a button or switch to enable encryption
- using content scanners to encrypt emails according to administrator settings.
LuxSci’s Secure Connector automatically encrypts every email message using TLS encryption for a seamless delivery to recipient accounts. LuxSci’s solution allows you to choose the right type of encryption to suit your email use cases. For example, you may want to send highly sensitive messages like patient lab results using a more secure form of encryption like Portal Pickup to protect patient privacy. Not every gateway can provide that level of flexibility so it’s important to understand how you want to use the tool when shopping for a solution.
When Should You Use An Email Encryption Gateway?
There are several situations when using an email encryption gateways is appropriate. These include:
Email Encryption Gateways For Microsoft 365 And Google Workspace
One of the most useful applications is for businesses that use Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace. These extremely popular email platforms do not come automatically configured for HIPAA compliance. To make Google Workspace HIPAA-compliant, you must use a third-party encryption tool to secure your emails. Microsoft Office 365 has an encryption add-on option, but it can be difficult to configure and cumbersome for your email recipients.
LuxSci’s own email encryption gateway Secure Connector works with both Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365 and is simple to configure. All it requires are LuxSci smart hosting accounts for your Google or Microsoft users. For example, if you have 20 users for your company’s domain in Microsoft, you would simply need LuxSci accounts set up in the same domain for those 20 users.
Once the user accounts are configured and smart hosting is enabled in Google or Microsoft, the outbound email for all of these users will flow through LuxSci’s Secure Connector. Every outbound email will be automatically encrypted, without the user noticing or having to do anything. This setup can help your organization meet its HIPAA obligations without having to switch email hosting providers.
Email Encryption Gateways Can Solve A Wide Range Of Problems
While one of the most popular uses of LuxSci’s Secure Connector is for automatically encrypting outbound email for Google and Microsoft, this has much to do with the ubiquity of these services, rather than the limitations of email encryption gateways.
LuxSci’s Secure Connector can also solve the following problems:
- An ISP does not allow your mail server to send outbound email, or limits the number of outbound emails to a set quantity. Secure Connector gives you a way to circumvent these limitations and send more emails.
- Your Exchange Server can’t send email directly for your organization, Secure Connector provides another means to do so.
- If an outbound email system does not support SMTP authentication, Secure Connector can perform the authentication instead. It supports username and password authentication, which can help to keep your organization secure.
- Your IP address has a poor reputation and your outbound emails are filtered out as spam by the recipients. Secure Connector can help to stop this from happening.
- You want to hide your mail server’s IP address. With Secure Connector, your mail server’s IP address can be hidden. This helps prevent mail from being blocked by recipients.
- Archive your outbound emails.
Is LuxSci’s Secure Connector The Ideal Email Encryption Gateway for Your Organization?
If your company needs an email encryption gateway to automatically secure all of its outbound email, LuxSci’s Secure Connector is the only choice. Our opt-out approach to email encryption sets us apart from other companies. It is a HIPAA-compliant solution that supports multiple types of encryption to increase security for highly sensitive emails. Contact our team now to learn more about how Secure Connector can help solve your problems.
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