Email security is an issue that I feel personally hits close to home, and one I think should be a major concern for anyone online today.  The threats of working online are increasing everyday.  Malicious users and hackers are getting better and better at what they do and many of them are starting at very young ages.  There have been reports of credit card fraud committed by kids as young as 13!

The best way to combat hackers is to stay up to date with the latest security trends, but let’s be honest with ourselves.  If you are trying to run a business, you are not going to have time to learn how to tinker with your server configuration to make sure your information isn’t stolen by some punk.

Securing hosting and POP3 email is extremely time intensive and very costly. Between purchasing SSL certificates and watching your server connection logs, you’d never get anything else done.

One of the best things about Gmail is its robust security features.  Here are just a few:

• Encrypted Connection
• Two Step Login
• Redundant Cloud Storage

Let’s take a look at each one.

Encrypted Connection

This is a big one that you might not realize is missing from your current email configuration. Unless you are paying for a SSL certificate, or are getting access to one from your host, your information is not being sent securely. Let’s put it into perspective. Say the server you rent is hosted in Florida and you live in Michigan. When your email client sends a request to your server in Florida, it send all of your information over in the clear. That means that every server that your emails hit on its journey across the country can with minimal effort take a peak at the contents of your messages.

Yep. Your passwords and everything.

Thankfully, Gmail has deployed a government-level SSL certificate, which ensures that all of your information is sent securely across the world. This is the same technology that the government and backs use to protect your sensitive digits.

Two Step Login

You might be thinking, even with all this advanced encryption, your information is still vulnerable if someone discovers your password. While that’s correct in a normal situation, Google has discovered the solution to this issue and just about everyone can access it. All it takes is a cell phone – not a smart phone, mind you – with SMS messaging enabled. Two step login requires individuals to input a unique and time sensitive code sent to you by Google via Test Message  when logging in to gain access to the account.

Here’s how that process looks:

First, the user visits Gmail.com and attempts to login to the account. If the username and password is correct, Google will accept it and redirect you to a screen asking you to “Verify Your Identity”. At that moment, Google will send a text message to your cell phone with a set of digits, which will expire if not used within 60 seconds, to input into the screen to verify your identity. Both the password and the unique code are required to gain access into the Google account.

This essentially means that even if a hacker has figured out your password, it’s meaningless. Unless they’ve managed to steal your cell phone as well, they’ll be unable to access your sensitive information.

Redundant Cloud Storage

Security is more than just protecting your data from hackers, it’s also going through the steps to ensure that your information will always be there when you need it to be there. The key to this is to backup, backup, and backup some more. The most modern way to backup your data is to use something called “Cloud Storage”. Cloud Storage is a pretty big buzzword, but essentially what it means is that when you upload something to a server, its actually being stored on multiple servers. This means if one server was to die, you’d still have access to your information in a secondary location.

As you probably already know, Google is by far the leader in cloud technology, and in no way did they skimp on the application of cloud with Gmail. With Gmail, once you send or receive a message, it’s automatically sent off as backups to multiple locations around the world. This means even if Google’s main datacenter was in the heart of a nuclear attack and everything was completely obliterated, your information would absolutely still be intact. It’s safe to say what goes to Gmail, stays in Gmail.