Earlier this year, KrebsOnSecurity disclosed a massive email leak, which exposed a decade's worth of email communications from a leading internet provider, U.S. Internet Corp. A simple configuration mistake left a publicly accessible link with a treasure trove of emails – not just from U.S. Internet employees, but also from a staggering 6,500 of their Securence division clients.
Adding insult to injury, Securence positions itself as a champion of email security, offering email filtering, management, and protection services to small businesses, large enterprises, and even government institutions. There's no telling how long these emails were vulnerable, or who might have peeked inside. One thing's for sure, though: businesses putting their faith in email security need a serious reality check.
Why Email is a Security Nightmare
As convenient as it is, email has never been ideal for sharing sensitive information and confidential documents. Here’s why:
Lack of Encryption: Standard email services lack strong encryption by default. Your data travels unprotected, vulnerable to anyone snooping.
Privacy Concerns: Standard email providers can access email content, raising privacy issues for sensitive information.
Business Email Compromise (BEC): Hackers use social engineering to compromise email accounts. From that point on, they can access all documents sent and received via that email address.
Human Error: A simple typo can direct sensitive email and attachments to the wrong recipient. Once an email is delivered, it cannot be undone.
Loss of Control: The sender loses control over the information after delivery. Recipients can freely download, copy, or forward the document.
Built-in Vulnerabilities: Email servers are just as susceptible to vulnerabilities like configuration errors and zero-day exploits as any SaaS.
Compliance Risks: Sharing sensitive data via email can violate certain conditions in regional and industry-specific data security regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA.
5 Alternatives to Securely Share Your Documents
Given the risks, it’s better to use secure file-sharing methods that offer built-in, end-to-end encryption, lifelong access controls, and detailed audit trails. Here are a few methods to choose from:
Secure Email Services
Secure email services, like ProtonMail and Tutanota offer end-to-end encryption for emails and attachments. However, storage caps, attachment size limits, and integration issues can make them a less practical choice.
Secure Collaboration Platforms
Multi-featured collaborative platforms like Slack and Teams offer enterprise-grade security features including secure file sharing between team members. However, their feature overload (messages, notifications) can create clutter, making it difficult to track important files. There are also file size limits, and recipients must register with the platform.
Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
SFTP offers a tried-and-true method for secure, encrypted data transfer, but it also has some drawbacks. Unlike modern SaaS solutions, SFTP lacks an intuitive user interface. Users often need command-line skills or familiarity with specialized client software to operate it. Additionally, SFTP servers consume significant system resources and become slow and less efficient with very large files or a high volume of transfers.
Managed File Transfer (MFT) Solutions
Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions offer a convenient alternative to SFTP by handling setup and management. However, your data must leave your infrastructure and traverse the MFT provider's servers, potentially raising privacy concerns and introducing additional security risks.
Finally, all these options only encrypt data in transit and do not address encryption at rest. Since they do not embed security within documents, recipients can copy, download, and share files unconditionally once they have them, taking security and control away from the original owner.
Secure Send with Confidencial
Confidencial provides a secure ‘send’ solution with an intuitive dashboard for securely sending sensitive files of any size to any internal or external recipient. With Confidencial, you can bypass emails and attachments to share documents and files of any size (up to 1TB) directly. Backed by our patented selective encryption and robust key management, Confidencial allows you to selectively encrypt the most critical parts of your documents and add granular permissions for sharing, re-encrypting, copying, and downloading.
More importantly, Confidencial embeds encryption and controls within your documents, ensuring protection no matter where the document goes. Here’s what you get with Confidencial secure Send:
Securely share large volumes of unstructured data, up to 1TB.
Auto-resume for network interruptions, with the ability to pause uploads.
End-to-end encryption ensures data is protected at the sender’s side.
No accounts to create, no passwords to remember.
Embedded protection stays intact even after documents leave your infrastructure.
Data-blind architecture ensures your documents never traverse our servers.
Detailed audit trails for all access, download, and share attempts.
83% of organizations suffer email breaches. Don’t be a part of that stat. Say goodbye to email anxiety and hello to secure data sharing with Confidencial. Try it today!
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