In a nutshell it’s not secure at all. There. Done. Thanks for reading my article.
Oh, you want to know why and what can you do about it. Then keep reading.
Email is about 60 years old and was never designed for the open way we communicate on the Internet these days. Sure, all the sexy functionality is predominantly done through the application you use to manage your emails. But the structure of the message itself and delivery mechanism is mostly the same as it has been for many years and therefore has not kept up with modern technology.
When you send an email the message and any attachment are sent using an open protocol (e.g. SMTP and POP). There are number of ways and email can be read by unintended people.
So what can you do about it. Here are some basic ideas.
Shareable links provide you much more control around the security of sending documents and other material. By sharing a link you are not sending the actual document but instead sending a link to a document that you have stored in the cloud.
The benefit is you can control access to the document with the following:
Of course, like all systems and processes there are still other ways for hacking to exist. But the suggestions above reduce the risk significantly.