Gmail Now Marking Non-TLS Emails as Not Secure

Google’s ongoing efforts to secure their platforms often results in a slew of security updates occurring at once, making it entirely possible to miss a vital change that can have repercussions for your business. One such update that may have slipped through the crack for IT departments around the world is a move toward marking all non-Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypted emails with a broken lock symbol, within Gmail – the Google email platform.

The simple emblem is intended to make it clear that an email has arrived without TLS encryption, or is about to be sent without it. This warns users that incoming messages may be malicious, or that outgoing messages might be seen as such. It also means that Google believes there is a possibility that communications could be visible to a third party.

This system is intended to increase awareness of what TLS is and how it works. In order for TLS to work properly, it needs to be implemented at both the sending and receiving ends. If either the recipient or the author of an email isn’t meeting this condition, the symbol will appear to warn both users involved.

On top of working to make email communication private, reliable and trustworthy, TLS also has the capacity to support further privacy benefits, such as ‘forward secrecy.’ This means that even if the encryption keys used to secure a message become public, they cannot be used to reverse engineer decryption any previously sent communication. However, it does take careful configuration of TLS in order to gain extra benefits like this.

If you’d like to know more about security for your business email, talk to the friendly team at Cumulo9.  You can find more information about us and our business by clicking the following link: https://cumulo9.com/