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Proofpoint, Inc.

About Email Encryption

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Situation General information regarding encryption service and mail flow.
Solution Quick walk through on mail flow of encryption services.


General Information

Proofpoint Essential's Email Encryption helps businesses automatically encrypt emails. This helps reduce the potentially negative impacts of data loss. Securing emails that contain sensitive data is one of your top priorities. As you know, losing confidential data or customer information can result in fines, bad press, and loss of customer trust. More than two-thirds of an organization’s intellectual property is exchanged via email among offices, partners, and customers. Your people may be sending sensitive content unencrypted. Without proper compliance and internal policy oversight, you may run the risk of leaks and other exposure.

Availability 

Proofpoint Essentials Email Encryption is available to customers who are subscribed to Advanced or Professional packages.

Proofpoint Essentials Email Encryption is available to customers in both US and EU regions. 

Technical Details
Cryptographic Algorithms
• Message Encryption: AES (256 bit)
• Digital Signature: ECDSA

Email Encryption Mail Flow

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

  • The sender composes an email and hits send.
  • The email is sent to Proofpoint Essentials (over TLS) where the content is analyzed to determine if there are any filters that apply to the message.
  • An encryption filter has been created and applies to the email.
    • If the filter conditions for encryption are not met, the message proceeds forward with standard routing.
  • The email is delivered to and stored in the Encryption portal. (Expires after 15 days)
  • A notification email is sent to the original sender (e.g., "Your email was encrypted").
  • A notification email is sent to each recipient (e.g., "You have received an encrypted email").
  • The recipient clicks on the link in the email to view the content via the Encryption portal.
  • The recipient registers (one-time) to the service and reads the email.
  • The recipient replies to the email.
  • The reply is sent to the original sender (over TLS) and delivered to their inbox.

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Emails from and to the same domain will not be encrypted i.e. user1@domain.com sending to user2@domain.com will be delivered without going through Encryption Portal

If additional recipients were included in the original email, other recipients would receive a notification that a reply has been added to the email.

 

Encryption Diagram

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Key Features 

 

Features

Benefits
Automated and Policy-Driven Email Encryption Companies can automatically identify and secure sensitive outgoing information, such as PII, PHI, financial information, GDPR terms and many more with built-in term dictionaries and SmartSearch identifiers.
 
User-Defined Encryption Users can encrypt emails in one quick and easy step. They just add
a simple identifier in the subject line of the email.
Secure Mail Portal Recipients of the encrypted emails are directed to our Secure Mail portal where they can read and respond to sent emails through an intuitive web portal. 
Outlook Plug-In / Add-In Users can trigger encryption by clicking a simple send button in their Outlook ribbon when composing a new email.

 

Last reviewed: 07/23/2023

By: Lee Conrad