Encryption, the process of taking readable plain text and turning it into gibberish is not the stuff of spy versus spy. It is not even the unintelligible language of geek-speak. Just like you lock your home or your car, so too, should you lock the important information on your desktop and in your email.
Tech shops such as ICI work hard protecting sensitive information on a web server. A variety of procedures and policies are in place and used when dealing with important information on the Internet. But, then, data so critical and protected via the web spills out in the workplace environment on an let's say an accountant's desktop, and, suddenly, it is now available for anyone to read.
Gene Spafford has likened "using encryption on the Internet as the equivalent of arranging an armored car to deliver credit-card information from someone living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench."
This is why desktop encryption is so important and so easy to implement. Inexpensive desktop applications such as GPG are available to download. Each person who needs to transmit or receive critical information creates a private key--your own special password and your administrator creates a public key that you upload into your encryption application. Information sent from one person to the other is sent encrypted using a shared public key, which can only be turned from gibberish to plaintext, if I have the shared public key coupled with my own private password.
This process can be used for email as well as for critical documents. If this sounds confusing, this is just do it and it will work situation. You will be amazed at how much fun it is to decrypt messages. And, no one, will be able to read your email!
The workplace is often an unsafe and unprotected environment. Now, do you have your password information pinned on your bulletin board? If so, this a larger problem and you should not be dealing with important information. Keep your passwords safe and enjoy the safe and secure world of undecipherable text.
