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    O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems

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    office365 audit hipaa ocr
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    • JaredBuschJ
      JaredBusch @Dashrender
      last edited by JaredBusch

      @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

      @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

      @TAHIN said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

      @scottalanmiller said in [O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems](/topic/9231/o365-and-encrypted-mail-to-other-email-the user almost certainly does not have a Microsoft account and instead of sending them their data we've are forcing them to sign up with a third party vendor who is holding their data until they get them as a customer (even if only as a free one.)

      Yeah, the fact that it has to be an entire MS account on the part of the recipient would be a dealbreaker for me.

      Yeah, I don't like that "a third party owns your data" thing. It is the same with Zix and everyone else. I'd find that very distasteful as a customer. It's my data, you have a secure way to send it to me already, why do I have to make an account with a third party to get my own data over a channel that is already secure?

      Because it's not really secure. The admins of the system of email you use have full access to that data.

      You are contradicting yourself. You just said a few posts up that Zix does exactly this anyway it the recipient's domain is also a Zix customer. What is on the other end simply does not matter. We all keep telling you that. It only matters that you send from your server to theirs are encrypted.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JaredBuschJ
        JaredBusch @Kelly
        last edited by

        @Kelly said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

        @Dashrender Just get hit by a Cryptowall variant. Everything is encrypted at rest then. Problem solved.

        http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/fc/fc7e1b09bcb54f86aa53394b8047e95261357c74410860202c8d6f3ea2787b53.jpg

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • scottalanmillerS
          scottalanmiller @Dashrender
          last edited by

          @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

          @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

          @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

          @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

          And honestly, if you said "well I emailed you the info" I'd say "Um, no, you emailed me an announcement that I could get the info elsewhere, that's not the same."

          This is something few others than Scott would say.

          Imagine if I call you and tell you that a package is in the mail. It would be insane to say that I sent you the info over the phone, right?

          Why do people treat it differently there?

          I don't think that's a good example. If you want to use mail - then I'd say something close would be the note left on your door that the package wasn't left because your porch wasn't a secure location, so we left it at the PO for you to pick up.

          No, that's nothing like it. You did NOT try to make a delivery and fail, you refused the agreed upon delivery method, went with a different one and only used the agreed upon one to notify me of the other one and then use terminology to sound like you did what we had agreed on.

          It is exactly the phone example and nothing like your "you weren't home" example.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • KellyK
            Kelly
            last edited by

            If this is a consistent and regular communication would setting up S/MIME be an option?

            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller @Kelly
              last edited by

              @Kelly said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

              If this is a consistent and regular communication would setting up S/MIME be an option?

              That's tantamount to GPG. So I would agree, when you get to that level, that kind of thing makes sense.

              DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • DashrenderD
                Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                last edited by

                @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                @Kelly said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                If this is a consistent and regular communication would setting up S/MIME be an option?

                That's tantamount to GPG. So I would agree, when you get to that level, that kind of thing makes sense.

                How is S/MIME tantamount to GPG?

                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • scottalanmillerS
                  scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                  last edited by

                  @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                  @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                  @Kelly said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                  If this is a consistent and regular communication would setting up S/MIME be an option?

                  That's tantamount to GPG. So I would agree, when you get to that level, that kind of thing makes sense.

                  How is S/MIME tantamount to GPG?

                  By being essentially the same thing...

                  https://www.imc.org/smime-pgpmime.html

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • DashrenderD
                    Dashrender
                    last edited by

                    I'm now on the hunt for others who are suggesting, or agreeing that TLS is enough to get the OCR auditors off your back if/when you get one.

                    I found http://www.hitechanswers.net/7-hipaa-compliant-assumptions-can-trip/

                    Our email provider offers TLS encryption, so we’re secure in sending email attachments.
                    TLS encryption is a great tool to help secure emails in transit, but only works if both sides of the email transaction are configured properly. Many consumer email providers aren’t equipped to support TLS encryption for their subscribers. If your email provider is only using opportunistic TLS and the recipient doesn’t support TLS, emails with PHI could be transmitted with no encryption at all. You may want to think twice about sending PHI over email, particularly when other, more secure methods are available.

                    So this is promising. Disable opportunistic TLS, i.e. require TLS and the problem is solved. I really do wonder how many systems we email that don't support TLS?

                    Time to look at the logs I guess - but that will have to wait until June - Deploying Win10 now.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • DashrenderD
                      Dashrender
                      last edited by

                      Here's a vendor that basically makes it's living off TLS only connections for HIPAA compliant email delivery.

                      https://luxsci.com/blog/level-ssl-tls-required-hipaa.html

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • DashrenderD
                        Dashrender
                        last edited by

                        And I found instructions on how to implement TLS required (aka Forced TLS) on an Exchange server.
                        http://o365info.com/configuring-the-option-of-force-tls-in-exchange-on-premises-environment-part-4-12-tls/

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • DashrenderD
                          Dashrender
                          last edited by

                          Well this is three years old but this guy really doesn't like only using TLS - but he doesn't specifically mention locking your server down to sending TLS only.

                          http://betanews.com/2013/09/02/5-big-myths-surrounding-computer-security-and-hipaa-compliance/

                          It's about 1/3rd the way down.

                          frankly I see a lot of things I don't like/agree with in this writeup.

                          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                            last edited by

                            @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                            Well this is three years old but this guy really doesn't like only using TLS - but he doesn't specifically mention locking your server down to sending TLS only.

                            http://betanews.com/2013/09/02/5-big-myths-surrounding-computer-security-and-hipaa-compliance/

                            It's about 1/3rd the way down.

                            frankly I see a lot of things I don't like/agree with in this writeup.

                            He claims that GMail doesn't have TLS. That's definitely not true. His whole theory is based on assuming that no one does TLS, but who doesn't do TLS?

                            DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • scottalanmillerS
                              scottalanmiller
                              last edited by

                              Overall, I skimmed, but he had a lot of good points and even points to us over on SW. But the TLS bit, and he admits he just researched it and might not know, seems to rest on the theory that no one offers TLS for the end users.

                              DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • DashrenderD
                                Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                                last edited by

                                @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                Well this is three years old but this guy really doesn't like only using TLS - but he doesn't specifically mention locking your server down to sending TLS only.

                                http://betanews.com/2013/09/02/5-big-myths-surrounding-computer-security-and-hipaa-compliance/

                                It's about 1/3rd the way down.

                                frankly I see a lot of things I don't like/agree with in this writeup.

                                He claims that GMail doesn't have TLS. That's definitely not true. His whole theory is based on assuming that no one does TLS, but who doesn't do TLS?

                                Well today, many do, But I won't say most do.
                                That write up is 3+ years ago.

                                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • DashrenderD
                                  Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                                  last edited by

                                  @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                  Overall, I skimmed, but he had a lot of good points and even points to us over on SW. But the TLS bit, and he admits he just researched it and might not know, seems to rest on the theory that no one offers TLS for the end users.

                                  I agree, this part is majorly outdated - three years ago, They might not have. I'd have to dig through and find the blog posts when Google, etc, enabled it by default.

                                  JaredBuschJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • JaredBuschJ
                                    JaredBusch @Dashrender
                                    last edited by

                                    @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                    @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                    Overall, I skimmed, but he had a lot of good points and even points to us over on SW. But the TLS bit, and he admits he just researched it and might not know, seems to rest on the theory that no one offers TLS for the end users.

                                    I agree, this part is majorly outdated - three years ago, They might not have. I'd have to dig through and find the blog posts when Google, etc, enabled it by default.

                                    Google has had opportunistic TLS enabled since 2012 at least because I set up forced TLS with a single domain back in 2012 at a client that uses what ever Google calls the old Postini product.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                    • scottalanmillerS
                                      scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                                      last edited by

                                      @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                      @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                      @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                      Well this is three years old but this guy really doesn't like only using TLS - but he doesn't specifically mention locking your server down to sending TLS only.

                                      http://betanews.com/2013/09/02/5-big-myths-surrounding-computer-security-and-hipaa-compliance/

                                      It's about 1/3rd the way down.

                                      frankly I see a lot of things I don't like/agree with in this writeup.

                                      He claims that GMail doesn't have TLS. That's definitely not true. His whole theory is based on assuming that no one does TLS, but who doesn't do TLS?

                                      Well today, many do, But I won't say most do.
                                      That write up is 3+ years ago.

                                      The real question is... who doesn't?

                                      According to PC World, GMail was 100% by 2010, Yahoo offered it at the time of the above article and forced everyone to it by 2014: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2085700/as-yahoo-makes-encryption-standard-for-email-weak-implementation-seen.html

                                      We know that Microsoft does. Rackspace does, I guarantee that Amazon does. Unless we are worried about the Zix kinds of companies avoiding it just to create insecurity in order to implement it again at high cost another way... who is there to not have TLS? Basically every major free player and anyone running their own systems either have it by force or must not have it by intention - in either case, not our concern.

                                      The only question is... who is on hosted, insecure email? My guess is, no one that you can find.

                                      DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • DashrenderD
                                        Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                                        last edited by

                                        @scottalanmiller said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                        The only question is... who is on hosted, insecure email? My guess is, no one that you can find.

                                        Those aren't the people I'm worried about - at least not the free hosted ones for sure.

                                        I'm more concerned with hospital, lawyers, small clinics, etc and what they are using for email. As discussed here and elsewhere for years, these guys move at a glacial pace. Many of them are super cheap too, so they look at subscription plans like O365 and it's forever payments, and make the sometimes invalid assumption that it costs more than a self hosted solution (now personally - there many times where self hosted is cheaper, but it's also riskier) so they refuse to move. It's these people that we have no idea if they have TLS implemented or not. Of course we'd love to hope that they are, but until we try, we have no clue.

                                        scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                        • DashrenderD
                                          Dashrender
                                          last edited by

                                          So I mentioned the TLS only option to my boss yesterday.

                                          I broke it down and told her there are basically two options:

                                          1. get a third party bolt on product like Zix, Barracuda, etc. This will be a subscription service that we have to pay for all of our users forever, but this option does allow for on/off of encrypted user to user email.

                                          2. Force our email server to use TLS for all connections. If we try to send an email to someone who's server doesn't support TLS, we simply can't send to them. Period. This is the free option.

                                          She left the conversation saying that I always leave her between a rock and a hard place. 😞

                                          dafyreD JaredBuschJ scottalanmillerS 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • dafyreD
                                            dafyre @Dashrender
                                            last edited by

                                            @Dashrender said in O365 and encrypted mail to other email systems:

                                            So I mentioned the TLS only option to my boss yesterday.

                                            I broke it down and told her there are basically two options:

                                            1. get a third party bolt on product like Zix, Barracuda, etc. This will be a subscription service that we have to pay for all of our users forever, but this option does allow for on/off of encrypted user to user email.

                                            2. Force our email server to use TLS for all connections. If we try to send an email to someone who's server doesn't support TLS, we simply can't send to them. Period. This is the free option.

                                            She left the conversation saying that I always leave her between a rock and a hard place. 😞

                                            It becomes a simple choice, though... Spend money for a third-party product... or use standards based stuff and not spend money...

                                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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