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How to Enable Office 365 Message Encryption: Complete Guide

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Published By Mohit Jha
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Published On April 28th, 2025
Summary:- Do you want to secure your email communication in Microsoft 365? In this article, I am dealing with the same. Since the threat of data breaches and cyber attacks increasing day by day.  It is crucial to protect your important information from unauthorized access. Go through this guide to learn how to enable Office 365 message encryption with this step by step guide.

Office 365 has many security features that help users protect their data, including message encryption, since it is important for businesses or organizations dealing with sensitive data to enable it. However, with the help of Office 365 message encryption, you can add a layer of security to your emails. It ensures that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized users. Only authorized recipients can read the data.

Moreover, users can encrypt their email messages by enabling it, making it more difficult for hackers to access and read. You can use the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center to create and manage encryption policies. 

Before jumping to how to enable Office 365 message encryption, let’s go through what encryption is and why the user needs encryption.

Encryption in Microsoft Office 365

Encryption, also called Message encryption in Office 365, protects sensitive information and messages. Only the authorized recipient can access the data because of these security measures. 

The process of encryption follows the process of encoding. The data can be converted into ciphertext or coded text, which is only read by the person having the key to decode it. Decoding of the ciphertext to plain text is known as decryption.

The user’s personal information or other data will be protected by the organization. To avoid cyber attacks, data breaches, and data theft, ensure you are enabled Office 365 message encryption. Moreover, with the help of Office 365 encryption, you can efficiently send messages to people within or outside your organization.

Why Users Need Office 365 Message Encryption

There are several reasons why users need Office 365 message encryption are mentioned below.

  • Preserve Security & Minimize Risk – Office 365 encryption protects data by making it unreadable to unauthorized individuals. By doing this, security breaches and data theft from the organization may be avoided.
  • Simplified Security Management with Encryption – Office 365 makes message security easier, which reduces the load on the IT team to protect data. Also, there is no need for comprehensive employee training on encryption methods. Additionally, it can reduce human error and improve overall security posture, however, the team needs to know how to enable Office 365 message encryption
  • Provides Cost-Saving Security – There’s no need for a separate encryption server with Office 365. It helps to increase your production and add encryption to it at a minimal cost. However, you can save your money on additional hardware.
  • Improved Privacy Concerns – Encryption keeps the messages confidential and protects sensitive information from random users. This is important for businesses handling private data or personal information, including financial data.

These are the reasons why encryption is useful in maintaining the data security of the organization.

Also Read About: Office 365 User Email Address Marked As Invalid

How Encryption in Office 365 Works?

After knowing about the reasons for the need for Encryption, it is important to know the workings of the encryption for a better understanding of how to enable Office 365 message encryption.

First, the message is encrypted. It means the transformation of the message occurs from plain text to unreadable encrypted text. This process happens from the sender’s side while sending the message. After that, the encrypted message is stored in the ciphertext, and after reaching the recipient, the message is changed back to plain text.

Note: A private key is used to open encrypted messages on the recipient’s device, but before access, a central server confirms the recipient’s identity twice.

How to Enable Office 365 Message Encryption?

To enable Office 365 message encryption, you need a subscription that contains this feature. Since most of the Microsoft 365 plans, including personal and business plans, have this feature. However, corporate plans offer additional security benefits like anti-spam and anti-malware protection.

Additionally, you have admin rights. First, you need to enable Azure Rights Management for Office 365 encryption. You can activate it from the Microsoft 365 admin center by navigating to “Protection Activation” and clicking “Activate.“

Prerequisites for Encryption

Prerequisites are required while enabling Office 365 message encryption.

  1. Encryption Key Setup – For advanced users, there’s an option to manage the encryption key for your organization. However, Microsoft manages this by default, so you do not need to make any changes to it.
  2. Confirming Encryption Settings – You can inspect whether the email encryption is enabled for your organization or not using “PowerShell.”
  3. Set Up Rules for Email Encryption – If you’re familiar with technical configurations, you can create rules in the Microsoft 365 admin center to automatically encrypt emails based on specific measures. 
Also Read: Why Old Emails are Not Visible in Outlook 365?

How to Send and Receive Encrypted Messages in Office 365?

There are a few steps that need to be taken; let’s discuss them step by step.

Steps to Send Encrypted Messages in Office 365

You need to follow the following steps to send an Office 365 encrypted message:

  • Step 1. Log in to Outlook Online with Office 365 credentials.
  • Step 2. Click on the Compose mail button and choose the option Encrypt given in the toolbar.
  • Step 3. Click on the Change Permissions to stop forwarding emails. 
    Note: It will be helpful to prevent the forwarding of the mail and the data.
  • Step 4. Complete your email message and click on the send button. 

Steps to Read the Encrypted Message

After receiving the message, the receiver does not see the need to perform these steps to see the email message.

  • Step 1. Click on the Read message button to open the message.
  • Step 2. Then, log in to the Office 365 account with the receiver’s credentials. Another method to read the message is by sending a one-time password to recover from the server.
  • Step 3. After successful steps, protected messages will be visible in the web browser.
  • Step 4. You can also reply from here.

Make Use of an Automated Tool

If you need to export Office 365 mailboxes to PST files, then I would suggest you use one of the most reliable and cost-effective software,  SysTools Office 365 Export Tool. You can download the demo and check the software working below for free.

Download Purchase

Highlighted features of this software are as follows,

  • Various O365 subscription plans are compatible with this tool.
  • Extracts data from Office 365 into PST, EML, MSG, MBOX, or PDF file types.
  • A date and category filter is available to export important data first.
  • This tool creates an Export Report that can be saved in CSV File Format.
  • It is compatible with the latest versions of Microsoft Windows 10 & 11 OS.

Wrapping Up

In this article, I have discussed the step-by-step process of how to enable Office 365 message encryption. Since Office 365 encrypted email is a great feature that protects businesses and private and maintains security too.  By following these instructions, you can add an extra layer of security to your messages and reduce the risk of theft of confidential information 

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