Billions of people use email to communicate. It’s not always the best choice when it comes time to send sensitive documents. With cyber and data security breaches on the rise, and data breach threats increasing, it’s important to know how to safely transmit sensitive information via email.
In most cases, it is not recommended to send confidential information via an email attachment or unencrypted message. This includes personal information like social security numbers, passport details, bank account details and business confidential documents. If you must send confidential data in an email there are some steps you can take to safeguard yourself and the recipient.
The inclusion of a disclaimer is a way to inform recipients about the risk that could be of the email. However, these disclaimers rarely have any impact since they are not legally binding and simply highlight that the contents of the email are confidential.
Other alternatives include using an encryption service This is more efficient and requires that both you and the recipient have systems that are compatible with it (e.g. S/MIME or PGP are two alternatives. You can also use software that compress files prior to emailing them. This can help reduce the size of your files and make it difficult for hackers to intercept your messages. You can also protect the document with passwords. the document to ensure that it is not accessible to anyone.
By adding a limit on time to the document, you can ensure only the intended recipient has access to the document for a limited period of time. For emails for business, enabling two factor authentication in your email platform can enhance security.