3 Key Aspects to Consider for PGP File Encryption

When you’re moving files containing sensitive information, you want to ensure its encrypted and not accessible to prying eyes, whether the data is at rest or in motion. The most effective way to protect files before, during, and after the transfer is through PGP file encryption. In this blog post, key considerations for PGP have been explained, as well as the importance of integrity checking.

PGP is a program for encryption and decryption that uses a public key model. In this model, one party shares the key with other parties to encrypt the data, and then uses the private key to decrypt the data. Here are a few aspects to consider for PGP:

•    Don’t let PGP slow down processes

Perhaps your company needs to maintain its current processes, including PGP or wants to continue supporting PGP because your business partners use it. No matter how PGP is being used as part of the file transfer method, it’s crucial to ensure that the process doesn’t get slowed down due to the signing, encryption, decryption and vital exchange steps.

•    Ensure interoperability

Also, you want to ensure you can easily and securely share files with any company. For this, you don't only need to support their PGP file encryption method of choice, but all possible encryption libraries. The Open PGP file encryption standard enables interoperability among most libraries, and is commonly used these days for PGP, so look for a solution that supports this.

•    Rule out file tampering

Files that are securely transferred is to be able to validate that transferred files have not been tampered in any way either before, during or after transfer. Integrity checking allows you to confirm that the file’s contents have not changed between the time it was sent and received– or during its subsequent storage.

You can do integrity checking when using PGP, if the sender signs the data. Seek a solution that lets you log all authentication integrity-checking details so that you have an audit trail.