" transmission Archives - LuxSci

Posts Tagged ‘transmission’

How Can You Tell if an Email Was Transmitted Using TLS Encryption?

Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

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.

Read the rest of this post »

Ensuring all data is encrypted at rest with LuxSci

Friday, May 10th, 2013

Email and other data are either being “transmitted” or “processed” or are “at rest.” I.e., it is moving from one computer to another, stored/at rest on a computer, or preparing to be transmitted or stored.

While most types of compliance regulation, such as HIPAA, specifically require that data be transmitted securely, not all regulations require that data be stored in an encrypted form while at rest. I.e., HIPAA does not require at-rest encryption, though it is recommended to decrease risk and potential liability in some situations.

Having your email and other data encrypted while at rest can potentially increase the security of that data, even if that level of security is not explicitly required. As a result, many LuxSci customers have asked how to ensure that all of their email and other data are encrypted while at rest.

Read the rest of this post »