Sending secure email to Great Yarmouth Borough Council

How we are preparing for the end of the GCSx email service

Great Yarmouth Borough Council has fully adopted the guidance issued by both Government Digital Services (opens new window) and the National Cyber Security Centre.

The Borough Council uses Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSx) mailboxes to send secure email to partner organisations and central government departments, currently provided by Crown Commercial Services' Vodafone GCF contract, which ends on 31 March 2019.  Please see the information below on how we are preparing for the end of the GCSx email service.

Standard secure email - OME

The Borough Council's standard secure email service for ad-hoc secure email uses Office 365 Mail Encryption (OME).  We mark emails as confidential, which automatically encrypts the email before it is sent.

Recipients will receive an email with a hyperlink that will take them to the Office365 Mail Encryption service where they will be able to decrypt the email by either requesting a "one-time passcode" or signing in with an existing Microsoft or Google account if they already have one.

Enhanced secure email - TLS

The Borough Council's enhanced email service is called Transport Layer Security (TLS) and is a designed to securely encrypt all email between two organisations.  This secure email service will replace the GCSx mailboxes.

This service requires a TLS connection to be setup between the Borough Council and other organisations.  Once the connection has been configured, all emails between the organisations are guaranteed to be secure and are sent with appropriate levels of encryption.  TLS is a government recommended standard and is free for organisations to implement.

How to set up a secure TLS connection

If your organisation sends email to the Borough Council GCSx (firstname.lastname.GCSx@great-yarmouth.gov.uk) email addresses, please ask your IT department to email servicedesk@norfolk.gov.uk with a subject line of 'TLS Connection Request'.  We will work with them to set up the TLS connection.

Once the TLS connection between your organisation and the Council has been established, all secure email can be sent and received using a standard @great-yarmouth.gov.uk address.