ENCRYPTED ATTACHMENTS DECRYPTED WITH ANY BROWSER
How can you be sure your emails are safe from prying eyes? To
most of us emailing mom or even sending work-related emails,
security really isn't of great concern. But the ones to whom
security is of great importance, sending their sensitive documents
over the Internet poses an extremely high degree of risk. That's
primarily because one of the Internet's strongest points happens to
also be one of its greatest weaknesses: Access to the Internet is
available to everyone.
There are two really big problems with sending encrypted emails
to someone. The first one is getting the decryption key or password
safely to the recipient. The other hurdle is making sure that the
recipient has the decryption software to unscramble what you sent to
them. And while the first problem can be dealt with by agreeing on
the key ahead of the time, telling it to them face to face, calling
them, sending it in the mail or getting it to them in a zillion
other ways, it is the second problem that we're going to deal with
in this column.
If you find yourself needing to send encrypted emails to a large
or even open-ended number of people, it would be an almost
impossible task and very expensive sending each and every one of
them a copy of the decryption software. Firetrust Encrypt solves
this dilemma in a novel way by using the ubiquitous browser, the
application that's most widely used to access the Internet. Here's
how it works.
Using the Firetrust Encrypt application, you first encrypt any
kind of file or document. Encrypt scrambles the data using a 256-bit
AES encryption standard and places it within a standard HTML
document which is then attached to an ordinary piece of email. Being
an HTML file, any ordinary web browser will be able to open the
attached file. You then email it to the person for which it's
intended. That person does not need any special software. All they
need is the ability to receive the email. Once your contact receives
the email, they then proceed to open the attached HTML document with
their browser.
The browser next displays a small screen that says that the
document is ready to be opened and prompts the recipient to enter in
the agreed password. At that point, the browser connects to the
Firetrust server at a remote location, retrieves the decryption
algorithm and completes the decryption process. The completed
documents contained in the attachment are now placed on the
recipient¹s desktop for immediate viewing.
Since the decryption process is done entirely by Firetrust's
remote server, the process will work on any recipient¹s type of
computer with online access be it a Windows, Macintosh or
Linux-based system, and even works behind a firewall. So basically,
Firetrust Encrypt encrypts and delivers documents of any format for
easy decryption using customer-administered passwords. No key
management system is required. And while the Encrypt application
itself is at this time only available for a Windows PC, it's nice to
know that at least anyone with an Internet connection will be able
to decrypt what you are sending them. This makes the Firetrust
Encrypt system one of the more versatile and openly universal
methods of sending encrypted files around.
Firetrust Encrypt sells for $29.95.
www.firetrust.com |
