Google introduced it’s new hosted S/MIME solution to enhance security for Gmail in the enterprise. SMIME certificates give the highest levels of confidentiality and security for your electronic correspondences by permitting you to digitally sign and encrypt your mail and connections.
Encryption means that only your expected beneficiary will have the capacity to read the mail while digitally signing permits them to affirm you as the sender and confirm the message was not altered in transit.
Hosted SMIME
Customer side S/MIME has been around for a long time. Be that as it may, its selection has been restricted because it is difficult to deploy.
With Google’s new hosted S/MIME arrangement, once an incoming encrypted email with S/MIME is received, it is put away utilizing Google’s encryption.Utilizing hosted S/MIME gives an additional layer of security compared with utilizing SMTP over TLS to send emails.
For the vast majority of emails, this is the safest solution – giving the benefit of strong authentication and encryption in transit – without losing the safety and features of Google’s processing.
S/MIME likewise includes indisputable account-level signatures confirmation (versus only domain-based signature with DKIM). This implies email recipients can guarantee that incoming email is really from the sending account, not only a matching domain and that the message has not been altered after it was sent.
How Can we Use?
To use hosted S/MIME, companies need to upload their own certificates (with private keys) to Gmail, which can be done by end users via Gmail settings or by admins in bulk via the Gmail API.
S/MIME requires every email address to have a suitable certificate attached to it and these certificates need to be obtained from trusted root Authorities which meet Crypto standards.
Hosted S/MIME is upheld on Gmail web/iOS/Android, on Inbox and on customers associated with the Gmail benefit by means of IMAP. Clients can exchange signed and encrypted emails with beneficiaries utilizing hosted S/MIME or customer side S/MIME.
Manage account certificates
- To use S/MIME, you or your system administrator have to upload the PKCS #12 file to your Gmail account.
- When you receive a message that is digitally signed with S/MIME, Gmail automatically associates the public key with a contact. You don’t have to manually create a contact.
- When you send a message, if there is a public key associated with the recipient in your contacts, Gmail automatically encrypts the message.
- If you add more than one PKCS #12 certificate to your Gmail account, you need to set a default S/MIME certificate that Gmail will use to sign outgoing messages.
How do I get certificates?
- Your system administrator will generate it for you, In this case, they can either directly upload it to Gmail or they can give it to you and you’ll upload it using the S/MIME Settings in Gmail.
- You can use a CA to generate a PKCS #12 file.
Benefits
- Add another layer of protection to prevent sensitive information from being revealed to those who shouldn’t have it.
- Scan email traffic for specific content, such as credit card or social security numbers, and set up policy-based actions when this content is detected.
- Identify and mitigate the loss of confidential data in scanned images.
- Use a third-party archiving product to store and discover mission-critical email.
- Analyze Gmail logs using advanced and customized queries.
- Enhance email security by enabling S/MIME encryption.
- Require a security key to sign in to G Suite Enterprise.
Also Read:
