Usability vs Security. Why Many Users Resist Email Encryption and How to Overcome It
In an era of data leaks, regulatory pressure, and ever-growing cyber threats, secure correspondence should be a given. Yet, despite decades of availability, few users or businesses actually adopt robust email protection and much of the reason lies not in a lack of technical capability, but in usability. Understanding the gap between security potential and real-world adoption is key to making encrypted messaging a mainstream habit. The usability barrier: Why encryption remains the exception While technologies such as PGP and S/MIME have existed for years, studies reveal these solutions remain largely unused. A survey-plus-user-testing study covering common end-to-end encryption tools found that over 60% of participants were simply unaware such options existed. Among those who attempted to use encryption, most were discouraged by the complexity of key management (“public keys”, “private keys”) and the difficulty of configuring email clients correctly daunting task for non-technica...