The structures that protect your email from outside interference are referred to as email security protocols. There’s a good reason why your email requires additional security measures. There is no security built into the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Isn’t that astounding?
What Is the Importance of Email Security Protocols?
Anyone who sends an email without using email security standards is exposing their personal information. As a result, their emails may be intercepted, and the sensitive information contained within them may be stolen.
Security methods exist to prevent fraudsters from sending emails that appear to come from your domain, in addition to securing the data contained within emails.
We recommend that you set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARK authentication for your personal email domain to prevent this from happening.
Here is a list of Email security protocols you may need:
- Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS)
- S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
- PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and OpenPGP
- Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
- DomainKeysIdentified Mail (DKIM)
Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS)
These are the most prevalent email security measures for securing your email while it travels over the internet.
Application layer protocols such as SSL and TLS are used. The application layer standardizes communications for end-user services in internet communication networks. The application layer in this situation provides a security framework (a set of rules) that works with SMTP (another application layer protocol) to safeguard your email exchange.
S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)
This is a widely used protocol for sending secure emails that are encrypted from end to end. The great majority of email providers and clients support it.
S/MIME uses digital certificates as signatures to authenticate and send encrypted emails that can only be read by the intended receiver. This protects the emails from eavesdroppers while they are in transit.
The contents of your email messages are always encrypted before they are sent over the internet using S/MIME. However, metadata in the header (such as sender and recipient information – as well as any other sections of the email header) is not encrypted.
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) and OpenPGP
OpenPGP is an encryption protocol that allows you to send highly secure end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) emails.
It’s widely regarded as the most secure E2EE for emails, and it’s the best way to send completely private emails that only the intended recipient can see.
The need to create a personal OpenPGP key pair can make setting up and using OpenPGP seem complicated to beginners (the public and private keys needed for this kind of asymmetric encryption). Creating this key pair and storing/sharing the public key, on the other hand, is one of the simplest ways to improve the security of your emails.
It’s worth mentioning that, like S/MIME-protected emails, OpenPGP encrypted emails still allow third parties like ISPs, email providers, and government agencies to snoop on email metadata in the header (such as the identity of the sender and recipient).
Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
The Sender Policy Framework (SPF) is an email authentication method that prevents the forgery of a sender’s address while an email is being sent.
This helps to protect people from phishing and malicious attachments by preventing spammers from sending messages that appear to come from someone else’s domain (which are inevitably more successful when a cybercriminal can spoof a legitimate domain).
The Sender Policy Framework is made up of three main parts:
- The foundation
- A method of authentication
- An email header is a piece of text that is used to convey information.
When an email is sent, the DNS record in the header (“envelope from”) can be checked to see if the IP address that sent the email was authorized to do so. If it wasn’t, the email client is aware of the situation and will reject the message.
DomainKeysIdentified Mail (DKIM)
Another authentication method for detecting forged sender addresses is DKIM. DKIM, like SPF, allows an email server to verify that the sender of an email is who they say they are. Likewise, DKIM is able to avoid spam and phishing as a result of this.
DKIM works by assigning a digital signature to an email, which is then verified to ensure that it came from the correct domain. DKIM also aids in determining whether or not the sender is permitted to send emails from the domain in question (to prevent spoofing).