Question

An accountant needs to send an email with sensitive information to a client and wants to prevent someone from reading the email if it is intercepted in transit. The client's email system does not allow them to receive attachments due to their company security policies. Which of the following should the accountant use to send the email?

A) S/MIME
B) PGP
C) HTTPS
D) TLS

Answer 1

The accountant should utilize S/MIME or PGP to securely send sensitive information by email without attachments. TLS also encrypts emails, but is typically managed by the service providers, while HTTPS is for web communication.

Step-by-step explanation:

The accountant should use Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) or Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to send an email with sensitive information to a client without using attachments. Both S/MIME and PGP provide email encryption, which ensures that only the sender and the intended recipient can read the email content.

Transport Layer Security (TLS) can also encrypt the email in transit, but it's usually implemented by the email service providers and may not be under the control of the sender. HTTPS is not directly related to email encryption; it secures communication over the web. The client will need to have the corresponding private key to decrypt the S/MIME or PGP encrypted email content.