Does Email Encryption and Security Affect Deliverability?

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Today more than ever email security is a major question. From hackers to the NSA and government, people are much more concerned about who is able to get their eyes on their emails. There are numerous ways to ensure safer email delivery, but do they affect how emails are delivered?

Well, the answer is yes and no – it all depends on your email service and applications.

SendGrid uses TLS encryption (aka transport layer security or server-to-server encryption), and does not compromise deliverability. However in order to send an encrypted message, your recipient’s mail servers must be configured support TLS.  

After conducting security and deliverability tests of over 8 million different recipient domains, it was found that 8.5% failed to establish a trusted TLS connection. That is when “opportunistic encryption” was implemented, which means that if there is a failed attempt at negotiating a TLS connection, they will unencrypt your message.

Therefore, the deliverability remains the same. Security may not.

With that being said however, email service providers are taking major steps to ensure security through encryption without affecting deliverability.

Google is going a step further and trying to convince all email senders and recipients to encrypt their emails while offering incentives. For example, Google says they will improve a search engine ranking of a site, if that site agrees to encrypt its emails.

Last month, Yahoo decided to follow in Google’s footsteps to make their email service more secure by next year.

Will this prevent, impede, delay or disrupt your email deliverability? So long as email hosts continue to seamlessly integrate encryption while maintaining a good TLS connection deliverability should not be affected. Even better, thinking long term, as more emails are securely sent via TLS encryption, it should increase the overall effectiveness and deliverability in email as an entire system. 

Jonathon Mahon is a content marketer, writer and designer based in Boston. He writes for various digital publications and blogs specializing in the cloud, email automation, software, and technology.