The Role of Email Encryption in Protecting Internal Team Conversations

We use all kinds of collaboration tools today—Slack, Teams, Notion, etc. And still, email continues to be the preferred medium for sharing important updates and documents.

Because email is such a key part of communication for teams, it’s also one of the easiest ways for confidential messages to end up in the wrong hands. That is where email encryption goes beyond just “a great security feature” and becomes a shield for everything that your team discusses behind the scenes.

Let’s take a deeper look at why encrypting email matters so much, especially for internal conversations.

Email’s “Invisible” Weakness

Generally, people believe that because email feels official and businesslike, it must be secure. However, email at its core, remains a system of another era, i.e. long before cyberattacks, remote work, or cloud platforms existed.

Typically, when you send any email, it doesn’t go straight from the computer to the inbox folder of the person at work in another office building. In fact, it goes through several servers and may go from one side of the world to another just to get from point A to point B. And when it doesn’t use encryption, it can be intercepted and read at any point along the route.

This risk is only exacerbated in corporations, where workers are sharing much more private info than they ever realize. The internal inbox is where product plans are hashed out for the first time, financial spreadsheets are exchanged, and private matters are taken care of between HR and workers. If any of that comes out, it can get very messy.

What Encryption Really Does

“Encryption” is a scary-sounding word that can conjure images of complex math problems and computer security experts huddled in darkened rooms. In truth, the concept is fairly simple.

Imagine putting a note together and placing it in a small metal container that can be locked. Then you give it to a delivery person. Even if the container goes missing or stolen, no one can decipher the message still because the thief won’t have the key.

That is what email encryption does—the contents of your email are “locked” in such a way that only the intended person can “unlock” them. Even if someone like a hacker intercepts it in transit, they’ll get nowhere.

Modern encryption goes even further. It can also secure an email message when it is in transit and when it is resting in an inbox or on the server at a business. In other words, if someone hacked into an account or obtained access to past copies of back-ups, that individual would still be unable to decipher it.

How Internal Teams Benefit the Most

Generally, businesses only consider encrypting when it comes to protecting something that goes to a consumer or business partner. But internally is where it often matters even more.

Within an organization, discussions are candid. Employees freely discuss problems, performance, issues, restructuring plans, upcoming product features, customer problems—information you don’t want finding its way out in the open. When teams don’t use encryption, it becomes remarkably easy for a cybercriminal to intercept that information.

In today’s environment where phishing is everywhere, what the hacker needs to get into your network is just one breached account. Think of what you they can access from that email account: calendars, documents, private chats, and invoice approvals, just to give you an idea.

Encrypting data works like a safety net. Even if another person finds out about that person's log-in credentials and enters the account, the sensitive information remains secure and can never be accessed. In fact, this is one of the very few security features that actually work in case of a cyberattack.

Below we take a deep dive into some of the reasons why internal teams must use email encryption.

1. Reducing the Problem of Human Errors

Even the “best” workers are human, and sometimes they screw up. Some unsuspecting person sends an email or document to the wrong individual. Another shares a conversation trail without taking the trouble to review what might be lurking in the trail. They attach the wrong spreadsheet. And occasionally, someone forgets their computer in an airport or loses their cell phone in the coffee shop.

Encryption can’t prevent the problem from occurring in the first place, of course, but it can ensure that the problem doesn’t matter. If the communication is encrypted, the only effect of an accidental viewer will be that someone, somewhere, will enjoy some nonsense that wasn’t meant for them. Someone will steal a laptop, and it won’t be spilling secrets about internal conversations for months. Older archived messages continue to be secure well after people forget that they wrote them.

2. Easier Than It Used to Be

There existed a point in the past when email encryption looked like a puzzle that only IT professionals were capable of solving. It required the use of keys and email plugins or special software that had to be created or purchased. Now it is just like magic.

In fact, the majority of modern systems, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, ProtonMail, and mid-tier email firewalls, feature automatic encryption functionality built right in. No training is required for workers. They can send and write messages exactly as usual, and encryption takes care of the hard work in the background.

3. It’s More Than Just Security

Encrypting data is more than protecting it from the wrong hands. It also sends a message inside and outside the company that you take data seriously. If your business protects communication in-house, workers can speak freely, and customers will entrust you with their data too.

And for sectors such as healthcare and legal, encryption is mandatory and absolutely necessary. Let’s not forget that regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC2 require that encryption be used for sensitive communication. Compliance is made much easier for them as it automates so much of the protection work.

4. Protecting the Business’s Memory

It is quite easy to forget that email messages are long-term records because of which companies retain them for several years or sometimes even several decades. In many instances, despite clearing messages from storage in the email account, it can still be present within some export files.

If those archives are not encrypted, that is just a jackpot for anyone who gains access.

But when it comes to archived messages that are encrypted, that risk goes down drastically. Old threads, financial updates from back in the day, or strategies in their infancy—nothing like that ever comes to light. Encryption protects not just what you say today, but what your organization said years ago.

Common Misconceptions about Email Encryption

• Many people think that encryption is for the executive, HR, legal, or financial departments only. In reality, it is for almost everyone in the business, as it pertains to something that is sensitive in nature, whether or not you know it. A quick update on a delayed project can reveal operational details. There may be a statement about performance or salary discussions that wasn’t meant to be included because it may be several messages back.
• Another myth is that encryption is too technical and can end up slowing everyone down. The way this myth originated is that when encryption first became mainstream, it was actually like decoding an email in order to write an email to someone. It actually required workers to manage keys and download plug-ins or follow special steps in order to write an email. Now, email systems can encrypt messages automatically in the background. All you have to do is write and send the email.
• Some teams are of the view that VPN protection is sufficient and it’s actually generally preferred by non-technical staff. VPN protects the link between the device and the organizational network. However, beyond that point, it is of no use in protecting anything like an email. In fact, the email passes multiple networks and servers in this manner and is unprotected.

Conclusion

In modern settings, and especially when we think of the escalating sophistication of cyber attacks on a daily basis, sending an unencrypted email is simply not enough.

Email encryption is one of the very effective applications of security that safeguards in the background and doesn’t require any effort on the part of the employees and fills one of the largest gaps in modern communication.

In conversations between members of the same team—where truth, planning, and sometimes sensitive information are involved—encryption has gone from being something of a nicety to a necessity.