IgniteIT Awards Finalist - Outcrypt
Project: Outcrypt: Email Encryption as an Add-In for Outlook 2003 & 2007
The Challenge
Describe the situation, challenge or problem you or your team faced.
Email is not thought of as a secure method of sending confidential information. Servers can be made secure, firewalls can be put up front, but once the email is received, it can sit on a laptop, BlackBerry, cell phone, or PDA, for anyone to see. The emails can be grabbed en-route as well. Formula1 teams have endured major fines from leaked information. Public companies incur insider trading risks when information is leaked to the wrong party. Insurance and financial companies have had losses of private information sent to the wrong party.
The Solution
Describe how your solution helped overcome the challenge. Tell us about the innovative ways you used technology to create this solution.
What obstacles or roadblocks were overcome? Is the solution reusable elsewhere? Be specific!
The solution is to encrypt the email at the source. We created an Outlook Add-in to encrypt email so that the only people who can read your email are the intended recipients. This Outlook 2003/2007 Add-in uses highly secure AES-256 CBC encryption technology. The key is not saved in your, or the email recipient's, computers or servers, or embedded in the software. There is a unique key for every recipient, so one recipient can not read another's email. The key is not available to any administration staff. Key retrieval is done inside an AES-256-CBC tunnel, and never stored. Notification or account usage, if appropriate, is on your Outlook 207 Email toolbar.
The Results
What positive impact did your solution have in the workplace, the community, or at home?
The email remains encrypted until the intended recipient decrypts it, and it can be re-encrypted to protect its information, but it is never stored on some other intermediate server. This add-in negates the need for awkward VPNs, unruly hardware requirements, or any interruption in your daily business flow. The encryption process is very quick. You can set up the entire service within your environment, or simply ‘subscribe’ to the service from our environment. There simply is not a more secure way of sending & receiving email, to or from anyone, anywhere, in the world. For a quick demo, see: https://www.devantec.com/demo/
Other Information
Feel free to let the community know about any interesting or humorous tidbits you feel will add to your submission.
This was difficult. haha. What isn't, when the end result seems so simple?
Products Used
To help the community understand the scope of your project, please select the technologies utilized.
Windows/Web Client, Development Platform/Tools
Web Technologies, Office Productivity
Security Systems, MS Office 2003 Primary Interop Assemblies, MS VSTO 2005 SE, Outlook 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies, Visual Studio Tools for the Office system 3.0, MS VSTO Office Interop Extension Libraries 1.0
Submission Hyperlink
https://www.microsoft.com/canada/igniteit-awards/view_submissiondetails.aspx?id=339