As focus intensifies on cyber-security threats and new data protection rules, a firm has launched a way to send emails in a more secure way.

A newly-formed UK cyber-security business, Beyond Encryption®, has launched a secure messaging platform to meet demands for protected communications amidst heightened threats and preparation for European data protection rules.

The firm’s product is called Mailock - Digital Recorded Delivery®. Kerry Nelson, founder and principle at Nexus IFA, has partnered with Beyond Encryption®.

Mailock enables users to use encryption simply. Aside from preventing unwanted interception, senders can track when messages have been opened by an authenticated recipient, revoke message access if mistakes are made and benefit from an audit trail of delivery - Digital Recorded Delivery®.

Forthcoming EU data protection rules – known for short as GDPR - will increase penalties on firms that are deemed to breach controls on data, making secure communications more important. Wealth managers and other financial services firms are at the centre of such efforts, given the need to protect clients' wealth.

“Failure to comply [with data protections] could have catastrophic results so the new technology has been designed to help businesses meet Data Protection, GDPR Plaand MiFID II obligations. With industry figures estimating that cyber-attacks are costing UK businesses more than £30 billion a year, the potential financial implications, reputational damage and business interruption are huge,” the firm said. To put communications flow in context, more than 240 billion emails are sent every day.

Beyond Encryption started nine years ago, founded by Paul Holland, a figure in the financial intermediary market. He launched Webline in the early 1990s, creating one of the world’s first consumer facing comparison systems; that firm was bought by Capita in 2006; Holland left the firm in 2009 and was involved in the business that became Runpath, a creative financial technology company, acquired by Experian late last year.

“The World Economic Forum has ranked cyber-crime as amongst the top three risks the world will face this year, so it is a very real threat.  More words are shared in email than are spoken in the world each day, many carrying sensitive content which can be intercepted in much the same way as a postcard might be in the normal postal system,” he said.

The platform can be accessed via an online portal or users can download add-ins/mobile applications which are compatible with most popular email systems and mobile devices.