An accountant wants to email her clients their tax returns but needs to be sure that no one else can open the attachments. A doctor wants to send an insurance report by email but is nervous about protecting the confidentiality of his client. The Procurement director needs to exchange pricing information with the supply chain but must be sure that this market-sensitive information doesn't leak.

Email is at the heart of business today. The Radicati Group, a technology market research firm, estimated in August 2008 that there are 1.3 billion email users worldwide. In earlier research, they counted 516 million business email inboxes worldwide . It's easy to ground these big numbers in your own everyday experience - just imagine what would happen if your own email link were switched off.

Email may be ubiquitous but it is far from secret. The vast majority of emails are unencrypted which means that they are not secure during transit and can ultimately be read by anyone. With so much at stake, what are the risks of sending unencrypted emails, what are the options for keeping emails private and what are the benefits of the MessageLabs Policy Based Encryption service? This white paper addresses these important questions.