Last week, on “Safer Internet Day” Google made the news with a number of announcements. Google makes email safer…

Firstly, it offered an additional free 2GB of drive space for those users completing a security check up. This is a great initiative that will hopefully make users aware that they need to regularly check their accounts for potential security problems, including setting up two factor authentication, checking connected devices and making sure that no unknown apps have access to their accounts.

Follow this link to perform your own security checkup with Google.

In addition, Gmail announced two new features on their blog.

When sending email…

The first is a new notification that users will see when sending emails from their Gmail account if they are emailing someone who’s mail server does not cater for the secure transmission of email, i.e. TLS.

Using TLS for email is not new, but the uptake in the market has been slow as it requires both mail servers to support the secure transmission.

With Google’s clout in the market, this should put some pressure on administrators to start supporting TLS for all email communication.

When receiving email…

The second feature will be a notification that will alert a user when they receive an email that is not authenticated, meaning that there is a problem with DKIM or SPF.

These authentication mechanisms are important as they help to verify the sender. This plays a huge role in combating spam and phishing emails.

Until now, users would need to look at the headers of emails to verify authentication, which is difficult for the average, non-technical person.

The good news is that Striata supports both of these technologies and all email sent on behalf of our clients supports TLS connections by default and is authenticated using both SPF and DKIM.