Email messages are often transmitted in “clear text”, meaning that any intermediate system handling the email could intercept and read the contents of the email and its attachments. Email encryption is a method of scrambling the contents of an email and its attachments to prevent snooping.

Microsoft’s email encryption feature further protects messages transmitted from a Clark University email account to non-Clark email accounts at other mail providers (like GMail, Yahoo, AOL, etc) by storing the message and its attachments on Microsoft servers. In order to access the encrypted message, the non-Clark email account receives a link to the message. This helps protect the message from theft if the non-Clark email account is compromised. Further, Clark maintains control over the contents of the message, allowing the sender to revoke access to the message in the future.

Email transmitted from a non-Clark email account to a Clark email account is not necessarily encrypted nor protected. When transmitting an encrypted email to a non-Clark email account, a reply from the non-Clark email account should not assume to be secured. For this reason, it is best practice to use encrypted emails between Clark accounts preferentially. When communicating with a non-Clark email account, only communications from Clark accounts are protected.