Enterprise Messaging Services

Secure Email Service

Secure Mail: Office Message Encryption (OME)

Impact: All Users of Secure Email (MailGate) 

The State of Connecticut Department of Administrative Services/Bureau of Information Technology Solutions (DAS/BITS) provides the State’s agencies with the ability to send electronic email securely, using the Enterprise Secure Mail Service. Effective, May 4th, 2022, the State of Connecticut will no longer support Axway Mailgate for sending or receiving Secure Mail.  The new product is Office Message Encryption (OME), by Microsoft. 

If you send Secure Mail to the State of Connecticut, what we recommend:
(1) Reach out to your state contact that you regularly send secure mail to.
(2) Have the state contact send you a secure mail.
(3) Reply to the state sent secure mail, with the information you need to send securely.

What is Office Message Encryption (OME)?

Microsoft O365 Message Encryption allows CT.gov email senders to encrypt messages to any email recipient.

  • Recipients of encrypted messages using this service can then use their email service credentials or a pass code to read and reply to the encrypted message.
  • Recipients with Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail/Outlook, and Office 365 accounts can authenticate using those credentials in leu of a passcode.
  • If the recipients are using Hotmail/Outlook or Office 365 and an Outlook or Outlook Online client then the message is automatically decrypted in their inbox.
  • Recipients must know their account username and password to the retrieve the secure mail message.
  • Mail does not expire sent securely.