Introducing Office 365 Message Encryption!
The next version of Office 365 Message Encryption, will provide you with a new service that lets you send encrypted emails to people outside your company. No matter what the destination-Outlook.com, Yahoo, Gmail, Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, GroupWise, Squirrel Mail, you name it! You will have the ability to send sensitive business communications with an additional level of protection against unauthorized access. For many businesses encryption is essential, i.e.:
A bank sending credit card statements to customers over email.
An insurance company providing details about the policy to clients.
A mortgage broker requesting financial information from a customer for a loan application.
A healthcare provider using encrypted messages to send healthcare information to patients.
An attorney sending confidential information to a client or another attorney.
A consultant sending a contract to a client.
A therapist providing a patient diagnosis to an insurance company.
Office 365 Message Encryption is the new version of Exchange Hosted Encryption (EHE). This version includes all of the capabilities of EHE and a couple of extra features, such as the ability to apply your company’s branding to encrypted messages. Like EHE, Office 365 Message Encryption works with Office 365 mailboxes as well as with on-premises mailboxes that use Exchange Online Protection.
Furthermore, Office 365 E3 and E4 users will get Office 365 Message Encryption at no extra cost. Microsoft is including it in the Windows Azure Rights Management, which is already part of E3 and E4 plans. They are also including it in the standalone version of Windows Azure Rights Management, and this at no extra cost.
Why don’t we take a look into how the encryption works exactly?
Setting up the encryption
The system administrators set up transport rules to apply to the Office 365 Message Encryption when emails match specified criteria. Transport rules provide great flexibility and control, and can be managed via a web-based interface or PowerShell.
In order to set-up the transport system, administrators simply need to select the action to apply or remove the encryption in the Exchange admin center. This is an improvement over EHE, which required complex headers and multiple setup steps.
You set up Office 365 Message Encryption rules in the Exchange admin center.
Once the rules have been set by the administator, whenever anyone in the company sends a message that matches the conditions, the message is encrypted using Office 365 Message Encryption. The outgoing message is encrypted before it is delivered to the outside mail server to prevent any spoofing or misdirection.
Receiving and responding to encrypted messages
When an external recipient receives an encrypted message from your company, they see an encrypted attachment and an instruction to view the encrypted message.
The encrypted message appears as an attachment in a message in the recipient’s inbox, with instructions for how to view it.
The attachment can be opened from your inbox and the attachment opens in a new browser window. To view the message, you just follow the simple instructions for authenticating via your Office 365 ID or Microsoft Account.
Once you are authenticated, the content of an encrypted message appears.
The Message Encryption interface – on Outlook Web App, is modern and easy to navigate around. You can easily find information and perform quick tasks such as reply, forward, insert, attach, and so on. As an added measure of protection, when the receiver replies to the sender of the encrypted message or forwards the message, those emails are also encrypted.
When you reply to an encrypted message you’ve received, your reply is also encrypted.
Office 365 Message Encryption allows you to customize the branding on your company’s encrypted messages and portal where the message is viewed. The customization is not limited just to your company logo, but can also extend to the text in the header, disclaimer, and the portal text in the sent email.
With Message Encryption, you can customize the disclaimer text and header text in your company’s encrypted emails.
You can also customize your company Logo and portal text that appear in your encrypted emails.
Administrators can use PowerShell cmdlets to set up the branding for these texts and images.
PowerShell can be used to set up different branding texts and logo emails encrypted in Message Encryption.
With Office 365 Message Encryption you can send sensitive information to people outside your organization with the confidence that that information is protected.