You give Encrypt button back NOW, Microsoft!!!!

November 2, 2019

You give Encrypt button back NOW, Microsoft!!!!

Recently Sensitivity labels were brought to Outlook, across all the various apps now, including mobile, desktop and web access.

This drama has certainly been worth watching. I think Sensitivity labels should gain a lot of traction in general over the next year or two. It’s so much more powerful than most people yet realize: Security that travels with the message or document wherever it roams, and is enforced not through some kind of “container” or perimeter-based protection, but rather a label–which corresponds to an abstract object in the cloud that contains the permissions list for documents bearing said label.

Therefore even with a single message or file that ends up traveling or spreading across multiple locations: Exchange, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, etc. or multiple clouds even (Google, DropBox, whatever), I would still only need to manage permissions and access to the original document as well as any other copies of that document in one single place: on the label via the 365 Security &/or Compliance admin centers.

Really cool stuff, and glad to see they continue to make forward progress bringing this functionality to all the various apps and services.

But, I have only one complaint for today… that area where you see the Sensitivity button in Outlook now? Yeah, that used to be the Encrypt button. And even though I love Sensitivity labels… I love the Encrypt button even more.

The reason is that 90-95% of the time, today at least, the only thing my customers really want to do with Information Protection in Outlook is ENCRYPT an email. Some of them like the Do Not Forward option too (really the only Outlook specific permission I can currently apply with a custom Sensitivity label anyway), but that’s a much smaller subset of people than those that just want pure and simple encryption.

So Microsoft, let me remind you that we went through all of this before:

First there was NO BUTTON, and you had to manually trigger encryption using like a subject line or body tag and a transport rule. YUK!

Then, thank Goodness, a button arrived, but it was buried and not super obvious what it was for. It also applied more protection by default with the Do Not Forward template, which also prevented printing any attachments.

FINALLY the button became more prominent and clear (in OWA at least–but it was called Protect instead of Encrypt), and then eventually the default permission was set to the Encrypt only template, which only encrypts the message and attachments (doesn’t apply any other restrictions like printing, forwarding, etc.).

It took sooooo long to win that button battle… I was soooo happy when they finally got it (mostly) right. Aaaaannnd now I’m soooooo bummed, because it’s buried again.

Look Microsoft, I really don’t think it’s too much to ask that you bring the Encrypt button back. And while you’re at it, can we have the Encrypt button also prominently displayed on the Home ribbon in Outlook for the desktop? It’s still hiding under the Options tab. Blah.

We were *almost* there on Outlook desktop too…

Just. Put. The. Button. Where. It. Belongs.

I don’t care what you do with the Sensitivity button. I mean, we’re proud of you–good work. And you can leave it on the home ribbon too if you want to, or maybe put it under an ellipses or back on the Options tab since it is second choice / less frequent an ask in my experience (will probably be used more to mark confidential internal emails, etc.).

My last choice would be if you placed the Encrypt button under the Sensitivity labels, and that was like a default label applied globally to everyone. But… no don’t do that. Seriously, what about just going back to the good old fashioned Encrypt button? That seems easiest.

Opinion Azure Information Protection, Email, encryption, Exchange Online, OME, Outlook 11 Comments

You give Encrypt button back NOW, Microsoft!!!!