There are different ways to send attached documents securely via email. However, it is becoming increasingly risky to send sensitive documents via email because cyber criminals commonly exploit emails to steal sensitive information.
Thus, when emailing documents (particularly those containing sensitive information), it is essential to ensure they are safe and protected from cyberattacks and data breaches.
How do you ensure your sensitive information is protected even if your email documents get into the wrong hands?
This article will explore the following:
There are different ways to send documents securely via email. Each of these methods has its pros and cons.
The 5 best ways to send documents securely via email are:
A secure way to send documents by email is to password-protect the document before sending it as an email attachment.
To do this, you assign a unique and strong password to your document and then share the password with the email recipient separately through a secure channel (like a phone call or text message).
When the recipient receives your email and downloads the attached file, they’ll need to enter the password to access it.
Sending password-protected PDF documents via email adds an extra layer of security. This is because even if the email is intercepted, the intruder cannot open the document and, therefore, cannot view its content.
There are different ways to password-protect your file, depending on your file type and the application you use.
Given that PDF documents are the most common type of file used, we’ll briefly discuss how to send a document password-protected using Adobe Acrobat.
First, you need to encrypt the document in Adobe Acrobat using these steps:
If you’re using older versions of Adobe, you’ll find the “Password Protect” option in the “File” menu.
Note that only people using Adobe paid versions can password-protect their PDFs. Thus, using this method to send documents securely via email will add extra costs to your email campaign.
There are free options to add password protection to your email documents too though. For example, you can do this for free in Microsoft Office applications or use free PDF encryption tools like PDFEncrypt.
However, just like with Adobe, these options add an extra step to your emailing process, making it less efficient. To send password-protected PDF documents using these options, you need to leave your inbox and open the third-party app to complete the password encryption before returning to your inbox to continue emailing.
In traditional mail and courier services, the recipient of a package is required to sign a form acknowledging that they have received it.
In the context of sending documents securely via email, requiring a signature on the emailed document serves more than acknowledgment of receipt.
The practice enhances the security of email communication, as it authenticates the recipient’s identity.
When you require that recipients sign the attached document electronically, you can verify the received signatures to ensure that the document reaches the intended recipient. This helps reduce the risk of unauthorized access.
There are different online platforms you can use to obtain signatures for documents, including DropBox Sign (formerly HelloSign) and DocuSign.
To use these platforms to request signatures for emailed documents, the process is typically:
Upon receiving the link, the recipient can sign the document by:
While these electronic signature platforms can help you obtain signatures for your document to enhance the security of email documents, they are not without drawbacks.
First, they come at a cost that can quickly add up over time. For a small business, paying this extra cost for just one very specific service (document signing) may just be too much.
Also, these platforms are not very efficient as they take you outside your usual mailing platform, adding an extra step to the emailing process.
Then, there are privacy concerns associated with uploading your documents with sensitive data to third-party sites.
Thankfully, signing your documents electronically using Mailsuite does not have these drawbacks.
Mailsuite allows you to request signatures at the instance of sending your email, making the process very efficient.
Another way to enhance the security of email communication is to encrypt your email.
When you send an encrypted email, the content of the email is sent in a way that is unreadable to anyone who does not have the correct decryption key. Thus, if your email is intercepted, the intruder cannot read its content.
Note that sending an encrypted email does not necessarily encrypt the attached document.
That said, how to send encrypted email depends on your email service provider. Here, we’ll look at the process for Gmail and Microsoft Outlook.
Gmail has a built-in encryption feature. However, to use the feature to send encrypted emails, both the sender (you) and your recipients have to enable the feature. The email won’t be encrypted if your recipient does not enable the feature.
So, the steps for sending encrypted emails in Gmail are:
When not all recipients can decrypt the message, Outlook will alert you, showing which recipients may be unable to read the encrypted message. You may send the message anyway or remove them.
Since encrypting your email does not necessarily encrypt attached documents (especially when using Gmail), one way to ensure documents sent via emails are protected is to ensure they are also encrypted.
When using Outlook, the process of encrypting your email also encrypts files attached to the email. But when using Gmail, follow these steps to encrypt PDF for email:
If you’re looking for the best way to send secure documents via email, here it is— control access to your PDF attachments.
PDF attachment access controls (such as whether or not the attachment is downloadable and expiry dates for when an attachment becomes inaccessible) can contribute to sending documents more securely because they put an extra layer of control over the access and distribution of the attached files.
Mailsuite is one of the best tools to control access to your PDF attachments and enhance the security of documents sent via email.
With Mailsuite, you can set your PDF not to be downloaded, ensuring the recipient can read the content but cannot download the PDF file. This can prevent the recipient from forwarding or sharing the document with others.
Another powerful access control feature for email documents that Mailsuite offers is PDF expirations. This allows you to set an expiration date for PDF documents so they are no longer accessible after the specified date.
With this feature, you can send sensitive documents via email, knowing they are secure because, after a certain date, no one can access the documents.
Thus, Mailsuite gives you complete control over your email attachments regarding whether files are downloadable and when they become inaccessible.
Interestingly, not only does Mailsuite help you send documents securely via email, but it also streamlines the process. You do not have to switch between apps or go through a complicated process to send a secure PDF.
Mailsuite allows you to quickly add access control to your email PDF documents with just a few clicks right inside your Gmail inbox.
The advantage of using Mailsuite to send documents securely via email is the ease of the process.
So, how easy is this Mailsuite-powered method? See the steps to send a PDF securely in Gmail using Mailsuite:
If you have not installed Mailsuite, sending documents securely via email starts with getting Mailsuite’s Chrome extension.
Simply go to the Chrome web store and click the “Add to Chrome” button. Then, accept the permissions and click “Connect with Gmail.”
Open your Gmail and click “Compose” to start a new email.
Enter your recipients’ email addresses in the “To” field. Add a powerful email subject line in the “Subject” field. Then, type your message into the main text field of the compose window.
Mailsuite’s “Campaign” feature can make your life easier when sending bulk emails.
Instead of typing in the email addresses of all your recipients, Mailsuite’s Campaign allows you to import your contacts from a Google sheet file for mass emailing.
Click “Campaign” at the right end of the “To” field. The compose window changes to green, signaling you’ve “activated” Mailsuite’s campaign.
Next, hit the “Personalize campaign” button in the compose window. In the window that opens, click “From Google Sheets” and select the file that has your contact list. Lastly, click the “Import data” button to close the window.
Gmail will automatically fill the “To” field with the email addresses of your recipients.
Now, it’s time to attach your PDF document to your email. However, don’t use the regular Gmail attach feature since you want to send secure PDFs via Gmail.
Instead, use Mailsuite’s “Advanced Document.” To launch the advanced document window, click the Mailsuite icon next to the “Continue” button in the Compose window.
Clicking “Advanced document” in Step 4 above opens the “Insert PDF” window. Click the option in front of “PDF file” to browse the PDF file you want to send. Then, select it.
Next, move to the right-hand side of the “Insert PDF” window to set access controls for your email.
First is the “Allow downloading” checkbox. If you check it, your recipients will be able to download the PDF document.
But if you uncheck it, recipients will be unable to download the file, preventing them from sharing it independently.
Another access control option is the “PDF expires” checkbox. Checking it allows you to set when the PDF document will become inaccessible to recipients.
Clicking the “Date” button reveals a calendar that makes it easy to set an expiry date for your PDF.
The “Hour” option in front of the date option lets you set the specific time on the chosen date when access to the PDF will be cut off.
After setting the desired access controls, click the green “Insert PDF” button at the bottom left corner of the window.
Hitting the “Insert PDF” button automatically attaches your secure PDF to your email and returns you to the email compose window.
Review your email to be sure everything is in order, then hit the “Continue” button to send the mail.
Gmail will send your email along with the PDF attachment secured according to the access controls you established.
Some important tips for sending secure documents via email are as follows:
If you mistakenly send sensitive documents to the wrong email address, you risk a data breach or violation of privacy.
This is because sensitive information (such as personal details, financial data, or confidential business information) may be exposed to unauthorized individuals.
Thus, a simple but important tip for sending secure documents via email is to ensure you’re sending the correct document to the correct recipient’s email address.
Simple ways to ensure you send the correct document to the intended recipient include:
You add an extra layer of security to email documents when you control how recipients access these documents. For one, controlling access to email documents limits recipients’ ability to share the document, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
Some document access controls to help you send documents securely via email include:
Mailsuite can help you set both view-only and time-limited access.
A process is inefficient if it is unnecessarily long. So, minimizing the amount of steps required to send secure documents via email improves the overall efficiency of the document-sharing process, saving you a lot of time.
For this reason, one of the best practices for sending secure documents via email is to reduce the amount of steps required.
This is particularly important when time-sensitive communication is paramount. When time is running out to email a document to a client, you won’t want to go through hoops to ensure the document is secure before sending your email.
Even if your emails are not time-sensitive, rather than spend a lot of time emailing, it’s better to complete the process as quickly as possible so as to have more time for your core business activities.
Know that reducing the number of steps required to send secure documents via email also minimizes potential errors.
With fewer steps, there is less room for mistakes in the document-sharing workflow. You are also less likely to seek shortcuts and put the security of sensitive information at risk when the file-sharing process is streamlined.
Mailsuite lets you efficiently secure your email document by adding access controls when attaching it to your email. This reduces the number of steps required to ensure secure document transmission via email, thereby reducing errors in the process.
With cybercriminals commonly attacking emails to steal sensitive information, it is no longer advisable to send confidential documents via email without ensuring they are secure.
There are different methods for sending secure documents via email, including password-protecting the document, requiring a signature upon receipt, using an encrypted email service to encrypt emails and attachments, and controlling access to attached documents.
Mailsuite is the best platform for controlling access to attached documents. Not only does Mailsuite allow you to send documents securely via email, but it streamlines the whole process.
Mailsuite also has the advantage of offering more than just allowing you to send documents via email securely. With campaign and mail merge functions, Mailsuite becomes a powerful email marketing tool for optimizing your email campaign.
The powerful Chrome extension also has an excellent email tracking feature, allowing you to track when recipients open your email, click in-mail links, or download attached documents.
