Email was never designed to be secure.
Instead, it was coded to be a quick and dirty communications method for use on the Internet at a time when data security was rarely even thought about. And thanks to its incredibly wide adoption, email continues to be a critical communications tool for enterprise environments. Quite simply, there is no rival. Many of us would even consider email a more important communications tool than the telephone.
Yet, because email was architected so long ago, and with very few security measures built in, IT systems and security administrators are having a tough time securing it.
In most enterprises, email should never be considered a secure form of communications. There are gaping security holes everywhere you look, including how email is secured on end devices, how it's stored within email servers, and how messages are delivered though corporate networks and the Internet. Daily phishing and other malware assaults on our corporate inboxes are a growing nuisance. The increased sophistication of email hacks is on the rise, fooling even the most tech-savvy users.
[Read more about those programming languages that lost their edge.]
Don't despair. We'll look at a number of recent advancements in email security that may help IT admins rest easier at night. Some advances attempt to take on email spoofing so you can be confident that an email actually came from the sender. Others look at ways to improve end-to-end encryption, with options to make it easy to use, and even mandatory. Last, there are several advances that seek to reduce and eliminate phishing, malware, and other undesirable messages.
The email system as we know it is at a crossroads. Either the technology (and those of us who manage it) must rapidly adopt security measures that protect email data at rest and in motion, or we must move on to a new solution that is built around a security framework.
Considering how entrenched email is in our daily lives, we need to at least give email security a chance before it's tossed into the dustbin of tech history.
Once you've reviewed the email advances we've got our eyes on, tell us in the comments section below which ones you think are promising -- or if you think we should abandon email altogether and find a new corporate communications platform.