Changes to CheckTLS Scoring (February 2021)

CheckTLS is changing our Confidence Factor℠.

We are not just changing how the Confidence Factor℠ is computed,
we are changing the intent of the Confidence Factor℠.

With the change in compute, some email systems are going to score lower and some are going to score higher. With the change in intent, email systems that do not keep their security updated will score lower and lower over time.

It Has Been A While

The Confidence Factor has been static: It has not changed for ten years. We designed it to be a measure of our confidence that email to the Target would be encrypted. Properly configured TLS with good certificates would score 100. Since then TLS 1.1, TLS 1.2, and now TLS 1.3 were released, all of which got lumped together with a score of 100, meaning "it would be encrypted".

Why Change?

Email security is more advanced than ever. With our history of twelve years and over 100 million tests, we know so much more than just "it would be encrypted". Governments, browser and OS providers, and security conscious organizations are deprecating TLS below 1.2. "It would be encrypted" isn't enough anymore.

While CheckTLS test reports were and are continually updated to show the latest details of email security, we wanted to give CheckTLS users visibility into this detail in one single, easy to use and compare number.

Will This Break EmailSentry?

EmailSentry customers should not be affected. The new Confidence Factor keeps the same Confidence Factor breakpoints (e.g. bad, ok, good, great) as the old one.

EmailSentry is a commercial product licensed to companies for their employee use. It puts CheckTLS inside of Outlook to meet HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, PCI, and other email security compliance requirements.

What Is Different?

The new Confidence Factor is more granular, taking into account more details about an email system and weighting them by importance.

The weighted granularity makes it easier for you to:

• feel confident about using an email address
• compare one email system to another
• see changes in email systems

Changes in Email Systems

Looking for changes in email systems is the biggest reason companies subscribe to CheckTLS. The new more granular Confidence Factor makes this easier.

Enables BaseLine Testing

The Confidence Factor is a key driver in our ability to offer BaseLine testing, which is new in 2021.
BaseLine testing is a game changer.

Contact Us

We welcome any Contact Us feedback, suggestions, or questions.