Email security

Portsmouth City Council has updated email security to better protect its data and that of all residents, customers and partners

To receive emails directly from the council, your email provider will need to be Transport Layer Security 1.2 (TLS 1.2) enabled.

TLS 1.2 encrypts data sent over the internet to ensure that eavesdroppers and hackers are unable to see what people transmit. This is particularly useful for private and sensitive information such as personal details, commercially sensitive information, passwords and credit card numbers.

Our analysis shows that most residents and businesses (over 99%) use email providers that are TLS 1.2 enabled. These residents and businesses receive emails from the council directly and will not notice any change.

The less than 1% of residents and businesses that do not use an email provider that is TLS 1.2 enabled will still be able to receive emails from the council securely, but these emails will look similar to the example below. To see the content, recipients will need to select the ‘Read the secure message’ button in the message and may be asked by their email provider to enter their email password.

If you’ve received an email in the format above and would prefer to receive emails directly in future, please contact your email provider and tell them that:

1. you’d like them to enable TLS 1.2,
2.  their email server(s) must be configured with a valid SSL certificate signed by a root authority that is trusted by Microsoft, and
3. self-signed certificates, expired certificates, and revoked certificates are not considered secure.