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Posts Tagged ‘tls’

New Feature: Secure Email Tagline

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022

LuxSci is introducing a new email tagline feature to inform recipients that email messages are secured. This helps build trust and increase confidence with less tech-savvy recipients who do not understand how email encryption works.

secure email tagline

TLS Encryption

TLS encryption is now widely supported by the most popular email providers. As a result, more organizations are choosing to send emails containing sensitive data with TLS encryption. There are a few reasons for this:

  1. TLS encryption is permitted under HIPAA and most compliance regulations.
  2. It’s easier to use and does not require recipients to log in to portals to access their messages.
  3. The open and response rates are higher on TLS encrypted messages.

However, using only TLS to encrypt emails can be confusing to the laypeople receiving them. While it’s easy to use and “invisible,” that can be concerning when transmitting sensitive information. If it looks like a regular email, recipients may be concerned that the organization does not care about the security of their personal information. This perception can negatively impact the business and dissuade people from using digital channels.

Introducing a New Email Tagline

For these reasons, all Email Hosting, Secure Connector, Secure High Volume Email, and Secure Marketing customers who send emails encrypted via SecureLine will have a small tagline at the bottom of the email that indicates the message is secure. It looks like this:

message secured by LuxSci tagline

This tagline builds trust and lets the recipient know that the company has taken steps to secure sensitive data. If you are an existing customer, visit your email settings or contact Customer Support to enable this feature. New customers will automatically have the tagline enabled when sending SecureLine encrypted emails.

Tags: email encryption, email security, encryption, escrow, portal pickup, tls, tls encryption, user experience
Posted in Email, New Feature Announcements
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Enhanced Security: AES-256 Encryption for SSL and TLS

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020

AES-256 EncryptionSSL and TLS play critical roles in securing data transmission over the internet, and AES-256 is integral in their most secure configurations. The original standard was known as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Although it was replaced by Transport Layer Security (TLS), many in the industry still refer to TLS by its predecessor’s acronym. While TLS can be relied on for securing information at a high level—such as US Government TOP SECRET data—improper or outdated implementations of the standard may not provide much security.

Variations in which cipher is used in TLS impact how secure TLS ultimately is. Some ciphers are fast but insecure, while others are slower, require a greater amount of computational resources, and can provide a higher degree of security. Weaker ciphers—such as the early export-grade ciphers—still exist, but they should no longer be used.

The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is an encryption specification that succeeded the Data Encryption Standard (DES). AES was standardized in 2001 after a five-year review and is currently one of the most popular algorithms used in symmetric-key cryptography. It is often seen as the gold standard symmetric-key encryption technique, with many security-conscious organizations requiring employees to use AES-256 for all communications. It is also used prominently in TLS.

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Tags: 128-bit rc4, 256-bit AES, aes, apache, beast, chrome, cipher, encryption technique, fips, firefox, gpg, internet explorer, iphone, mail.app, opera, outlook, pgp, rc4, safari, secret, side channel attack, ssl, symmetric encryption, the beast, thunderbird, tls
Posted in LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy, Popular Posts
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TLS 1.0 to 1.2 and NIST TLS Cipher Updates: Email Program and Web Browser Compatibility Issues

Friday, January 10th, 2020

It happens at least every few years: system administrators need to update the security configuration of their servers to keep up with the latest best practices and to close newly found security issues(i.e., via changes to recommended TLS ciphers and protocols).  These updates can be rocky. Change often introduces incompatibilities that prevent certain systems or programs from being able to connect to the updated systems.

(Article updated for January 10th, 2020).

In this article we are going to look at what email program an web browser incompatibilities arise when you migrate from using the “old standard:” TLS v1.0+ and the ciphers recommend by NIST 800-52r1 to using either TLS v1.0+ and the new NIST 800-52r2 ciphers or TLS v1.2+ and the new NIST 800-52r2 ciphers.

Why?

  1. PCI required that servers that need to be PCI compliant use only TLS v1.1+ (which really means v1.2+) by the end of June, 2018.
  2. NIST 800-52r2 updated its recommended cipher list and remove many ciphers from revision 1 that are now considered “weak” and introduced a number of new, better ciphers.  Administrators should be using NIST 800-52r2 cipher support as a best practice.
  3. Organizations that require HIPAA compliance should also follow the NIST guidelines and prepare NIST 800-52r2 support and, where possible, support TLS v1.3 and eventually eliminate pre-TLS 1.2 support. See: What level of TLS is required for HIPAA compliance?

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Tags: 800-52, 800-52r1, 800-52r2, apache, nist, stunnel, tls, web browser
Posted in LuxSci Library: Email Programs and Devices, LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy
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What Level of SSL or TLS is Required for HIPAA Compliance?

Thursday, January 2nd, 2020

SSL and TLS are not monolithic encryption entities that you use or do not use to securely connect to email servers, websites, and other systems. SSL and TLS are evolving protocols with many nuances to how they may be configured. The “version” of the protocol and the ciphers used directly impact the level of security achievable through your connections.

Some people use the terms SSL and TLS interchangeably, but TLS (version 1.0 and beyond) is the successor of SSL (version 3.0). See SSL versus TLS – what is the difference? In 2014 we saw that SSL v3 was very weak and should not be used going forward by anyone; TLS v1.0 or higher must be used.

Among the many configuration nuances of TLS, the protocol versions supported (e.g., 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3) and which “ciphers” are permitted significantly impact security. A “cipher” specifies the encryption algorithm, the secure hashing (message fingerprinting / authentication) algorithm to be used, and other related things such as how encryption keys are negotiated. Some ciphers that have long been used, such as RC4, have weakened over time and should never be used in secure environments. Other ciphers protect against people who record a secure conversation from being able to decrypt it in the future if somehow the server’s private keys are compromised (perfect forward secrecy).

Given the many choices of ciphers and TLS protocol versions, people are often at a loss as to what is specifically needed for HIPAA compliance. Simply “turning on TLS” without configuring it appropriately is likely to leave your transmission encryption non-compliant.

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Tags: AES256, cipher, ePHI, hipaa, NIST 800-52, ssl, sslv3, tls, tls v1.0, tls v1.2
Posted in LuxSci Library: HIPAA, LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy
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What is TLS? Secure Email 101

Tuesday, November 27th, 2018

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a widely used protocol in email security, the other being Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Both are used to encrypt a communication channel between two computers over the internet.

An email client uses the Transport Control Protocol (TCP) – which enables two hosts to establish a connection and exchange data – via the transport layer to initiate a handshake with the email server before actual communication begins. The client tells the server the version of SSL or TLS it is running as well as the cipher suite (a set of algorithms that help in securing a network connection that uses SSL or TLS) it wants to use.

After this initial process, the email server verifies its identity to the client by sending a certificate the email client trusts. Once this trust is established, the client and server exchange a key, allowing messages exchanged between the two to be encrypted.

What parts of a message does TLS encrypt?

 The protocol encrypts the entire email message, including the header, body, attachments, email header, sender and receiver. TLS does not encrypt your IP address, server IP address, the domain you are connecting to, and the server port. The visible metadata informs where you are coming from, where you are connecting to and the service you’re connecting with, such as sending email or accessing a website. This article explains what is really protected by TLS and SSL.

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Tags: ssl and tls, ssl vs tls, tls, tls vs ssl, what is TLS
Posted in LuxSci Library: HIPAA, LuxSci Library: Security and Privacy
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