How the email encryption works

Encryption has been used for many years as the only effective way of securing information on the internet. So it's no surprise that encryption is the best way to secure your email. Secure-mail uses the worldwide standard AES and RSA encryption algorithms, recognised by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology as the best available.

When the secure-mail hub is first installed a unique key pair is generated. This key pair comprises a private and public key. The private key is held by you and stored on your Secure-mail hub as well as backed up on the USB key which you use for the initial installation. The public key is sent to Securecoms so that it can be disseminated to all other Secure-mail users. At this point, any other public keys are received by your hub. This is done automatically and at regular intervals to ensure that you always have up to date public keys on your hub.

The hub takes about 10 minutes to install and once in operation, your external emails will pass through it. As they do, the hub will check to see if the email is going to someone who has the Secure-mail service. If it is not, then the email will pass through as normal. If the email is going to a recipient using Secure-mail the email will be encrypted.

The body and any attachments in the email will at first be encrypted with a symmetric 256 bit key, randomly generated by the hub. This is then encrypted with the recipient’s public key which is a 4096 bit asymmetric key. When the email is received by the intended recipient, the email is unencrypted as it passes through the recipient’s secure-mail hub or when it is opened if the recipient is using the software version, Secure-mail:lite.

Throughout its journey across the public internet, the email is secure.