SecureLine^TM: Email Encryption

OVERVIEW

Send Secure Email to Anyone.

SecureLine^TM seamlessly integrates three distinct modes of secure email communications: SMTP TLS, SecureLine^TM Escrow, and SecureLine^TM PKI, to ensure that you can securely communicate with anyone.

Receive Secure Emails from Anyone.

SecureLine's SecureSend Portal enables anyone to freely send secure emails to you.

Three Methods of Secure Email

TLS

Simple, Seamless, Transport Encryption. TLS ensures that each message is transmitted from you all the way to your recipient's email server over an "enforced secured channel", even though the message itself is not encrypted within the channel. The message emerges from the TLS-secured channel onto the recipient's email server and is delivered to the recipient's INBOX like any regular email message. SMTP TLS prevents eavesdropping, ensures transport encryption of messages, and is a sufficient level of encryption for HIPAA.

Your recipients' email servers must support TLS for this mode of easy encryption to work (most do) — LuxSci determines this automatically for you and falls back to other mechanisms as needed. See also: SMTP TLS: All About Secure Email Delivery over TLS.

SecureLine^TM users can disable TLS-Only sending on a per-message basis (e.g., if you prefer TLS in general, but would like to use Opportunistic TLS + something more secure (Escrow, PGP, or S/MIME) for particular messages).

More Details — SecureLine^TM TLS

Escrow

Retrieve Secure Messages from a Web Portal. With SecureLine^TM Escrow, each recipient receives a simple email notice of a waiting message in his/her INBOX. The recipient clicks on a link in that notice, answers a security question or provides a password to verify his/her identity, and then accesses the message over a secured connection. Escrow enables sending secure messages to anyone, no matter what mail service they have.

More Details — SecureLine^TM Escrow

PKI

PGP and S/MIME Certificates. SecureLine^TM supports use of S/MIME and PGP for message encryption and decryption. If you require message content to be always encrypted and to be sent in full to the recipient, then this is for you. It does require that your recipient be "set up" to use S/MIME or PGP.

More Details — SecureLine^TM PKI

SecureLine^TM integrates all of these methods, using the best choice for each recipient based on your sending preferences. In general:

• TLS is easiest to use, though least secure. It is compatible with most recipients
• Escrow is very secure and compatible with any recipient; however, recipients have to go to our Web Portal to pick up messages.
• PKI is the most secure, but hardest to use as it requires communication of certificates and setup of email software for all recipients using it. Most people do not use PKI unless they have a specific need for it.

Three Methods Compared

Security	TLS	Escrow	PKI
Meets HIPAA Requirements
Message encrypted during tranmission
Message encrypted at rest
If the recipent's email account is compromised, messages can still be safe		*
Message content at rest protected from any LuxSci staff access?		**	***

* Use of Escrow with "Question and Answer" recipient verification protects the messages if you use well chosen questions and answers. Use of "SecureSend Login" recipient verification allows the recipient's password to be easily reset by anyone with access to the user's email account. This is why "Question and Answer" authentication can be more secure.

** Escrow with "Message Center" enabled technically allows LuxSci operations staff to unlock saved messages, as the system needs to be able to open any saved messages for the user. Escrow with Message Center off (the default) eliminates the possibility of anyone for except the individual recipients themselves to unlock their messages.

*** PKI-encrypted messages can never be opened by LuxSci operations staff unless you have "Escrowed" the password to your private key with LuxSci for auto-decryption or password-recovery purposes.

Feature	TLS	Escrow	PKI
Recipient can reply securely to sender
Message content delivered to recipient INBOX
Secure messages appear just like regular messages to recipient
Recipient must retrieve message from a secure web site
Recipient must set up security software ahead of time
Sender can retract a message after sending
Sender can tell if recipient has read a message
Open tracking must be enabled in your LuxSci account to track if recipients have read messages sent over TLS or PKI. Escrow has its own read tracking system included.
Sender can get read receipts that always work

How Messages Are Encrypted

SecureLine^TM selects the encryption method to use separately for each recipient of each message. As a result, a single message to multiple people can employ many different encryption methods. SecureLine^TM takes care of this all behind the scenes — in general, little or no sender interaction is needed.

For every recipient, SecureLine^TM goes through the following list of possible encryption options, in order, and uses the first one available for that recipient.

In cases where none of the first 6 options work and SecureLine^TM cannot interact with the sender, SecureLine^TM cannot send the message securely. The message will fail to send to this recipient and the preferred action to take in this case is followed (e.g. Send insecurely or send a bounce notice to the sender indicating the failure).

As long as "Escrow with SecureSend Login verification" or a default Question and Answer are provided, messages will always be able to be sent securely to anyone without sender input.