Email service provider
mailbox.org has announced the launch of “one-click” PGP-based encryption. The company, which was established in 2014, is an arm of Heinlein Support GmbH and has headquarters in Berlin, Germany. It bills itself as the first email service to offer PGP encrypted email.
The cloud-based offering provides a range of collaboration solutions, including documents and shared calendar solutions alongside cloud storage. It competes with solutions like Google Docs, Dropbox and Microsoft Outlook/365, but offers the “latest security standards” including DANE protocol connections and DNSSEC-handled DNS data. Like more traditional solutions, it is offered on a subscription basis, which starts at only 1 Euro ($1.11) per month with a free 30-day trial. The adoption of a “one-click” approach to PGP-based encryption means it is “easier than ever before for users to send encrypted emails and files”.
PGP is “one of the world’s most secure encryption methods for email traffic” but is often slow to encrypt emails that have large attachments. It also requires a complex operations procedure. Server-side PGP has now implemented OX Guard, which is “fully PGP compliant, but implements it in such a way that it is both fast and simple”. The company offers a new “Guard” module that works with all PGP solutions and allows users to generate encryption keys without requiring technical capability.
“Previous attempts to use PGP as a mainstream encryption tool have failed because of users’ confusion over managing the keys, PGP format types, and lack of trusted central key repositories,” explained mailbox.org’s CEO, Peer Heinlein. “There have also been problems with lack of support for webmail or Cloud systems. Plugin solutions for browsers like Mailvelope could only partially decrypt PGP. And crypto experts have been questioning for years if it is even possible to achieve secure cryptography in JavaScript. But now OX Guard has helped us to overcome all these issues. It is a simple-to-use, server-side encryption solution for everyone, every day.”
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