Google to bring full scale encryption to Google Apps

Google is making available a service to allow its enterprise customers to send and receive encrypted e-mail to users of non-Google mail systems, including Yahoo and Microsoft Exchange. Google Apps Message Encryption (GAME) was designed specifically for Google Apps by Zix Corp, which for over a decade has enabled subscribers to send encrypted e-mail to recipients, who in turn must enroll to be notified of and access such messages.

Google on Thursday announced a new partnership that will bring full scale encryption to Google Apps. Working with email data protection company Zix, Google has launched a new commercial product for Google Apps accounts dubbed Google Apps Message Encryption (GAME). Although Google already supports secure, encrypted messages within its servers, email messages sent to other systems are not encrypted. Organizations or users can use various workarounds to add PGP (public-key cryptography) to their messages, but those solutions are kludgy and not ideal for an organization with lots of users.