Guard Encryption – Sending and Reading Encrypted Emails

Overview

Guard is an encryption security component that allows you to encrypt emails and files. Guard Encryption provides the following options.

• Sending an encrypted email. Only you and the recipients can read the email content. 

• Sending an email with a signature. The signature ensures that the recipient can recognize whether the email content has been changed on the transport. 

• Sending an encrypted email with a signature.

In this article, we will discuss:

 

• How to Send an Encrypted Email

• How to Read Encrypted Emails

• How can External Recipients Read an Encrypted Email

How to Send an Encrypted Email

For more information on sending an encrypted email, please see the article Guard Encryption Set Up in Cloud Mail and go to the Defining the Basic Settings When Using an Encryption Function  section.

How to Read Encrypted Emails

To be able to read an encrypted email, the Guard security password is required. 

1. Select an email with the Encrypted icon . In the detail view, the notification Secure email, enter your Guard security password is displayed. 

2. Enter the Guard security password. 

 

3. You can define how long the security password should be remembered by Guard. To do so, enable Keep me logged into Guard. 

 

4. Select a time range from the list. 

 

5. In the Guard security settings, you can define a default value for the time range. 

 

6. Click on OK. The content is shown in plain text. 

 

7. If the email includes attachments, functions for using the attachments' decrypted or encrypted versions are displayed. 

 

How can External Recipients Read an Encrypted Email

You can also send encrypted emails to external recipients who are using differing email systems. When adding an external recipient, Guard checks whether a public key is available for this email address.

Depending on the result, Guard uses different procedures for sending the encrypted email: 

• If there is a public key for the recipient: 

  • The message is sent encrypted with this key. The recipient can read the message with their private key. 

• If there is no public key for the recipient: 

  • If the external user already has a guest account, they receive an email with the link to the login page of their guest account. When having logged in, they can read the encrypted email on the guest page. They can send an encrypted reply from this page. 

  • If there is no guest account, a guest account will be created. The external recipient receives an email with a link to a guest page and an automatically created password. The user logs in to the guest page. Then they can create their own password. 

    • Depending on the configuration, the automatically created password and the link to the guest page are sent in separate emails. 

    • Depending on the configuration, guest account emails are deleted from the server after a specific number of days.