Secure emails using Office 365 Office Message Encryption
At the start of September 2020, Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Children's Trust introduced Microsoft’s secure Office Message Encryption (OME) process for sending and receiving emails with sensitive information and large document files.
It is important to note that OME does not need to be used for email correspondence between certain partner organisations, such as other local authorities, the NHS and the Justice Service, as well as most government and police bodies.
In these cases, confidential e-mails with sensitive information or large files can be sent securely using Transport Layer Security (TLS) without the need for additional email encryption using OME.
There is no need to do anything to enable TLS, as it runs as backend technology to protect data.
Secure email exchanges are only possible via TLS if the email domains of partner organisations are included in the TLS users list.
For organisations that do not appear on this list, the council and Birmingham Children’s Trust will use Office Message Encryption (OME) for secure email exchanges, more information is available on the council's website.