Many people believe that e-mail privacy is inherent and guaranteed, psychologically equating it with the postal system. E-mail systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet, and actually predate the Internet in existence. While the ability to access your personal e-mail messages is secured with a password, this is insufficient to guarantee legitimate security. There are additional security considerations when using laptops to access e-mail systems. Businesses are increasingly relying on electronic mail to correspond with clients and colleagues. As more people find the need to transmit sensitive information through the internet, the need for e-mail privacy becomes more apparent. The e-mail message is perpetually exposed to unauthorized access as it travels along this unprotected Internet from the composer to the reader. If routers between the source and destination of an e-mail message are compromised, potentially any e-mail message passing through that router could be accessed. Unencrypted e-mails should be regarded as postcard, in that anyone who receives it can read it. Intelligence agencies screen unencrypted e-mails with ease and conduct these screens regularly. Some e-mail you may send and receive could be considered company property. It is unwise to associate personal e-mails of any kind with a company address. When using laptop notebooks to send and receive e-mail, you may often be using someone elses network. You must be aware if using a wireless network if the network is encrypted. If the network is not properly encrypted any e-mail you send or receive is accessible to any skilled person within the wireless signal range. Even when using secure networks, everything you send and receive is going through their system. It is imperative that one uses TLS encryption when sending mail, and to use a send mail server other than the foreign network. When reading e-mail on someone elses network, you must make sure your mail server supports SSL and use the encrypted access only. If you delete an e-mail you must not have the misconception that the existence of the e-mail is gone forever. This is not the case as most electronic documents are backed up and recoverable, and most e-mails are backed up on a remote server at some point in time. For more information about Laptop Security visit Security4Laptops.com. |
