Buyers’ Guide: Email Encryption for Insurance Update

This paper has been developed in response to The Council members’ requests for guidance on which email encryption service would best help them comply with heightened regulations regarding email encryption in certain circumstances. This paper will assume The Council members have themselves, with counsel, identified which communications should be transmitted in encrypted form to comply with HIPAA regulations in the United States, FSA requirements in the United Kingdom, or other requirements that they may have identified. Why is this important now? There is a recent dramatic expansion of HIPAA’s regulatory net. Email encryption is the best method of complying with data privacy rules. The Council’s members report the marketplace for email encryption services has become sufficiently complex to evaluate; the vendor selection process is complex. This analysis has been reviewed and tested by The Council for accuracy. The Council interviewed member firms using the email encryption vendors discussed in the analysis, to confirm accuracy of the analysis results. From this review The Council believes the framework and results are a fair and useful representation of the marketplace, based on publicly available information. Frank Sentner, the Technology Advisor for The Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, makes the case as to why the risk and insurance industry can no longer ignore the power of RMail® Registered Email™ services, as the service is not only simple to use, but also more cost-effective. He discusses RPost benefits for carriers and brokers and why the industry can no longer rely on handshakes. It makes for a convincing case. In three key points, the article summarizes the opportunity: (1) Registered E-mail™ services give court litigants a leg to stand on. (2) The RMail® Registered E-mail™ service is simple and easy to use. (3) In some cases, Registered E-mail™ services have cut down on paper and mail costs by as much as 60 percent.