Encrypted Mail

Up until now Fax and traditional mail services have been the only approved methods to securely send sensitive information to students, faculty, staff and users outside of the ESU organization. Work-from-Home has caused significant changes that impact how we conduct day-to-day business and the IT department has searched for ways to keep necessary information flowing for our users. To that end we are very pleased to announce that we have a simple way for you to send and receive protected email including attachments directly within Microsoft Outlook!

We are constantly looking for ways to simplify security and encrypted mail is exactly that! To send an encrypted email it’s as easy as opening Outlook on your desktop or in a web browser. You will find encryption natively available in Microsoft Outlook for the web and the Outlook 2019 desktop application. Some Outlook 2016 desktop application users also have this function but not all do (*see below*). Once in Outlook, open a new email, click the options tab, click the padlock icon and select either Encrypt-Only or Do Not Forward. Now, click back to the Message tab and complete your email as normal, hit send and you’ve just successfully sent a secure message!

This service would not suffice if it only worked in limited use-cases. We have tested this service focusing on the use of Outlook encrypted email with a wide variety of email providers (Gmail and Yahoo as an example) & attachment file types. Through testing we have found the capabilities to be robust, secure and highly compatible for many 3^rd party recipients using different mail services. With the roll-out of the encrypted mail function we can securely send email attachments to anyone with an emporia.edu email AND any Gmail, Yahoo or 3^rd party email service user. *To further assist you with the use of Encrypted mail and Outlook compatibility concerns we have developed a how-to document to visually walk you through the process and answer questions about how and why to use encrypted email. If you have any questions about any aspect of encrypted mail please contact the IT Help Desk: by phone (620) 341-5555, or email “helpdesk@emporia.edu”