Companies can protect sensitive information sent by email by applying message-level encryption, specifically S/MIME or PGP, which encrypts the content of each message so that only the intended recipient can read it. Unlike transport encryption, message-level protection keeps data confidential even when stored on mail servers. The sections below unpack the most important questions organizations face when building a secure email strategy.
Email routinely carries information that, if intercepted or accessed without authorization, can cause serious harm to individuals and organizations alike. The most common categories include personal data such as names, addresses, and identification numbers; financial records and payment details; legal documents and contracts; medical and health information; and internal business intelligence such as strategic plans, source code, or proprietary research.
In professional environments, automated system notifications add another layer of risk. Project management tools, development platforms, and customer service systems frequently send notifications that include issue descriptions, client names, internal comments, and technical details. These messages are often overlooked as a source of exposure precisely because they are generated automatically rather than composed by a person. The content can be just as sensitive as any deliberately written communication.
Understanding what travels through email is the first step toward deciding what level of protection each type of message requires. A message containing a patient's diagnosis warrants stronger protection than a generic meeting invitation, and a notification exposing a client's open support case deserves the same care as a manually written email about that client.
Transport encryption, most commonly implemented as TLS, protects the connection between mail servers while a message is in transit. End-to-end email encryption protects the message content itself using cryptographic keys, so the message remains unreadable to anyone except the intended recipient, including mail servers and service providers along the delivery path.
The practical difference matters significantly for enterprise email security. TLS ensures that a message cannot be intercepted while moving between two servers, but once the message arrives at its destination, it is typically stored in plaintext on the mail server. Anyone with access to that server, a system administrator, a compromised account, or an attacker who has breached the infrastructure, can read the content.
Message-level encryption, by contrast, wraps the content in a cryptographic layer that persists regardless of where the message is stored. The mail server holds an encrypted object it cannot read. Only a recipient with the corresponding private key can decrypt and read the message. This distinction is critical for organizations that need to demonstrate confidentiality not just during transmission but throughout the full lifecycle of a message, including storage in sent folders, inboxes, and archives.
A complete enterprise email security gateway addresses both layers: enforcing strong TLS connections for transport and applying S/MIME or PGP encryption to protect message content in storage and at rest.
S/MIME, which stands for Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is a widely adopted standard for email encryption and digital signing. It works by using a pair of cryptographic keys: a public key that anyone can use to encrypt a message addressed to you, and a private key that only you hold and use to decrypt it. S/MIME certificates are typically issued by a trusted certificate authority, which links the key pair to a verified identity.
When a sender wants to encrypt an email using S/MIME, their email client or gateway retrieves the recipient's public key, often from a directory or a previously received signed message, and uses it to encrypt the message content. The recipient's email client then uses their private key to decrypt and read it. Because the private key never leaves the recipient's control, no third party in the delivery chain can read the message.
Digital signatures are a complementary feature of S/MIME. A sender can sign a message with their private key, allowing the recipient to verify that the message genuinely came from that sender and has not been altered in transit. This provides both authentication and integrity assurance alongside confidentiality.
S/MIME is well suited to enterprise environments because it integrates with existing public key infrastructure (PKI) and is natively supported by many major email clients. Its reliance on certificate authorities means that trust hierarchies are familiar to IT teams already managing certificates for other purposes.
PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, is an email encryption standard that uses the same public/private key principle as S/MIME but operates through a different trust model. Instead of relying on centralized certificate authorities, PGP uses a decentralized "web of trust" in which individuals vouch for each other's public keys. OpenPGP is the open standard based on PGP and is the form most commonly implemented today.
S/MIME certificates are issued by recognized certificate authorities, which means trust is established through a formal, hierarchical chain. An organization purchases or obtains certificates, and any recipient whose email client trusts the issuing authority will automatically validate the certificate. This makes S/MIME straightforward to deploy in corporate environments with existing PKI.
PGP relies on users or organizations directly exchanging and verifying public keys, or on key servers where keys can be published and retrieved. Trust can be extended transitively through endorsements from other trusted parties. This model gives individuals more control and avoids dependence on commercial certificate authorities, but it places more responsibility on key management practices.
Neither standard is universally superior. S/MIME tends to integrate more smoothly into enterprise environments where certificate infrastructure already exists. PGP is often preferred in technical communities, open-source ecosystems, and scenarios where communicating parties prefer not to rely on commercial certificate authorities. In practice, many organizations need to support both, because their communication partners use different standards. An email security gateway that handles both S/MIME and OpenPGP allows administrators to configure a preferred standard while accommodating the other where suitable keys are available.
Organizations can encrypt automated email notifications by routing them through an email encryption gateway that applies S/MIME or PGP protection before delivery. This approach works without modifying the application generating the notifications, because the gateway intercepts outgoing messages at the SMTP level and encrypts them using the recipient's public key.
Automated notifications from project management tools, development platforms, customer relationship systems, and other business applications frequently contain sensitive operational data. A Jira issue notification might include a client's name and the details of a reported problem. A Confluence page update might reference confidential internal documentation. Leaving these messages unencrypted exposes the same information that the organization carefully protects inside the application itself.
A gateway-based approach is particularly practical for notifications because the sending application does not need to be updated or reconfigured to support encryption. The gateway handles key lookup, encryption, and signing centrally. Administrators can scope protection to specific domains or individual addresses and expand coverage gradually as key availability grows.
For recipients who do not have a usable encryption key, well-designed gateways offer alternative secure delivery mechanisms, for example, delivering the message through a secure portal rather than as a plaintext email. This ensures that the absence of a recipient key does not silently result in unencrypted delivery of sensitive notification content.
Email encryption helps organizations meet compliance requirements that mandate the protection of sensitive personal, financial, and health-related data. Regulations such as the GDPR in Europe, HIPAA in the United States, and various national data protection laws require organizations to implement appropriate technical measures to protect personal data, and email encryption is one of the most directly applicable controls.
Under GDPR, organizations must protect personal data against unauthorized access and demonstrate that they have taken appropriate security measures. Sending personal data by unencrypted email creates a documented risk of exposure, particularly if messages are stored in plaintext on mail servers accessible to multiple parties. Applying message-level encryption addresses this risk and supports the ability to demonstrate compliance during audits.
In regulated sectors such as healthcare and financial services, the requirements are often more specific. Healthcare organizations subject to HIPAA must protect protected health information (PHI) in transit and at rest. Financial institutions face requirements under frameworks such as PCI DSS that address the protection of payment card data and other sensitive financial information. Email encryption, combined with documented key management practices and delivery policies, provides a technical foundation for meeting these controls.
Beyond specific regulations, encryption also supports broader information security frameworks such as ISO 27001, which requires organizations to assess and address risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. Email is one of the highest-risk channels for information disclosure, and encrypting sensitive messages is a recognized and auditable control within such frameworks.
savignano software solutions offers two purpose-built products that address email encryption across different environments, from specialized Atlassian notifications to enterprise-wide communication.
Whether your organization is taking its first steps toward encrypted notifications or building a comprehensive enterprise email security strategy, Savignano brings the expertise and the tools to make encryption practical and effective. Get in touch to discuss your requirements and find the right approach for your environment.
