Virtru Academy Live: Virtru for Gmail 101

Steven Margolies: Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining today. We'll be going over the Virtru for Gmail essential user training. We will go through everything you need to know for your end users. This session will be recorded and sent out afterwards. We will also do another session in a few months, but for now, let's get started. 

First off, my name is Steven Margolies. I'm the senior director of customer support here at Virtru. On today's agenda, we are going to cover what Virtru is, why it's important, how to use Virtru for Gmail, and how to get support. We will also have some time at the end for questions and answers.

So first, what is Virtru? Virtru is an email and file encryption solution that gives users full control over their sensitive data. We help customers keep data secure and stay compliant with major regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, CJIS, and others. When you use Virtru to encrypt your content, it helps ensure you stay compliant with these regulations, as failure to do so could lead to large fines. It also helps you limit the risk of a data breach by adding an additional layer of security to keep your content safe and help you maintain control. Additionally, we help you maintain trust. If there were a breach or compliance violation, it could undermine trust with your customers and cause both reputational and economic fallout.

When should you use Virtru? This slide shows examples that we find among our user base. However, for any specific guidelines regarding your team, please talk to your internal administrator. Some common reasons include dealing with health and human services, such as HIPAA compliance when handling personal health information or other identifiable information. For police and fire departments, it is used for case reports or any other criminal justice information. Other examples include children and family services, financial data, Social Security numbers, or if you are an HR team handling onboarding paperwork, benefits, and private communications. Again, these are just common use cases. For specific direction, please talk to your internal administrators.

For the main part of our session, we are going to cover how to use Virtru. In the demo, I will cover a few different things, including installation, activation, sending secure content, managing settings, reading secure emails, and performing a secure search. I will also review the recipient experience and cover some additional tips and tricks. 

Let's say you are an end user and you want to install Virtru. You might find that it has already been installed, as administrators have the ability to deploy Virtru directly to your machine. However, if you need to install it yourself, there are a few pathways to get the Virtru extension. If you go to our help center, we have a section for users, a Gmail section, and an install and activate guide, which will link you to the Chrome Web Store for Virtru Email Protection. You can also search for the Virtru Gmail extension on Google to find the Chrome Web Store entry, or go to virtru.com/install, which has links to our email products. Clicking the Gmail option will take you to the web store. All routes lead there. You will click Add to Chrome to install it. Once installed, you will see a Get Started page with some tips and tricks.

When you head over to Gmail, you will get an activation prompt. You may need to refresh Gmail first. Simply click activate, and it should process in the background, giving you a confirmation once complete. If it is your first time, it might even walk you through some quick demos. Once you open a new draft, you will see the Virtru toggle at the top, and you will be able to toggle that on or off. 

To send securely, turn the toggle on so it turns blue. When you do that, you will also see a gear icon with some options. I am going to send an example secure email. I will put in the email address, the subject, add an attachment, and type some content in the body of the message. Once your message is ready, you can apply additional security settings. Bear with me for just one second; I need to refresh my page because I had disabled a setting on my account. 

Alright, coming back to that draft, here are your standard settings. Disable Forwarding stops the recipient from sending that message along to a new party. If they do try to forward it, the new recipient will not be able to unlock the content or view anything. Expiration Date ensures the recipient cannot access the content after a specific timeframe. We will set it to a week here. You can also add settings to your attachments. Watermarking displays the user's email address across the face of the document and disables downloading. Persistent Protection allows the user to download a version of the document, but it is really an HTML link that goes back into Virtru and requires them to verify their identity to view the content. I am going to apply a couple of settings here: expiration and watermarking. My message is ready, and I am going to send it. You will briefly see an encrypting message notification as it passes through the send window.

Now, let's look at the email on the recipient's side. Here is the email. This one is a branded message, using the custom colors and Virtru logo for this test organization. I will also send another test over just so you all can see what that looks like in a few moments. If I go to my sent folder and click on that message, you can see the message is decrypted. I can manage the settings if I need to adjust access. 

Returning to the recipient's side, their messages typically will not decrypt directly in their mailbox because many recipients are not Virtru customers. Instead, they will click Unlock Message, which routes them to the Virtru Secure Reader. Usually, they have the ability to select their email address. If there are many recipients, they might need to enter their email address manually. If they are on a BCC list, they will have to use that specific option. If they use Google or Microsoft, we recognize that and give them the ability to log in with their provider. Otherwise, they will use a verification email pathway, which I will demonstrate now. 

They will reach a confirmation page, head back to their mailbox, and receive a verification email. They can either click Verify Me as long as they are in the same browser and session, or enter the provided code into the box. I will click Verify Me. It takes me to another tab, completes the process, and now I am able to view the message. You can see the expiration and watermarking settings applied. When I go to view the attachment, because it has been watermarked, the recipient's email address is displayed across the face of the document. If I were to take a screenshot, for instance, it would be known that I was the user who did that. 

From here, I can also send a secure reply. When I do so as the external party, I receive a copy of the reply in my inbox. It is delivered from virtru.com, but it notes that I am the sender. As the Virtru user, I will get a copy of that message in my mailbox as well, which will decrypt right there because I have the plugin installed.

Let's say the user needs to download that file, or the expiration date has passed. As the sender, I can go back in and turn off the expiration and watermarking settings. I will give this a moment to update. Because I already verified my identity in this session and didn't clear my cache or log out, I can go right back into that message on the recipient side. Now you can see it is still noted as encrypted, but I can download the file. If I view the file, there is no longer a watermark.

I also want to show you our encrypted search functionality. If your administrator has enabled this, you have the ability to search within the body of messages sent by you and your teammates. It is a simple keyword search. We do not search for exact phrases, although you can look for multiple keywords. Let's say I want to find the word barbecue. I will go into my inbox and search for barbecue. You can see it finds a bunch of other emails, but it also finds the one I just sent, even though the word is in the encrypted body. So, if you are looking for something, you can use this feature. Keep in mind that you will only be able to search for things sent by you or members of your Virtru team. You cannot search the body of a secure message that came back to you from an external party.

I also want to show you some example rules that you might trigger. Administrators have the ability to enable additional security settings for their team that may flag or even automatically encrypt content based on the context of the message. In this example, I am going to put in a fake Social Security number. My team actually has a rule that automatically encrypts the email when a Social Security number is present. It didn't give me a warning; it simply wrapped the message automatically, even though Virtru was initially toggled off. 

In other scenarios, you might have a warning rule set up. In this case, Virtru is off. Let me type in the trigger phrase: secret recipe. This time, when I hit send, you can see a warning that I triggered a rule for this particular phrase. As the user, I can choose to Protect and Send, which encrypts it. I can send it unencrypted by choosing Send Anyway, or I can cancel the send and modify the message accordingly. In addition to encryption or warnings, messages could be blocked entirely, or you might find that security settings are adjusted automatically. Administrators can set a variety of rules and actions that act on your messages.

That concludes the main part of the demo. We covered installation, activation, sending, rules, and settings. We also talked about reading messages, secure search, and the recipient experience. I want to quickly cover how to get support if you need assistance. We offer two options. The first is self-serve. If you go to support.virtru.com, we have a ton of guides aimed specifically at end users utilizing the Virtru plugin. Head to the Help Center, navigate to Virtru for Users, and then select the Google and Gmail section. There you will find how-to documentation and troubleshooting guides. If you are still having trouble, there is an option at the top to contact support. You can open a ticket with us, and we are happy to assist.

That wraps up the presentation. I see a question: Any tips for rolling this out to a team? Should we let them know ahead of time? 

Typically, we suggest that if you are purchasing Virtru and rolling it out to end users, it is very helpful for the administrator to send an email notifying the team. You have the option as an admin to either deploy the extension through your administrative tools, like Google Workspace managed Chrome, or allow users to install it directly. If you go to the Virtru admin section and navigate to the Gmail area, we have a Virtru for Gmail admin guide that walks through things to consider during deployment. We also provide an email template to help introduce Virtru to your users, and we suggest sharing a Gmail user guide that is specifically aimed at end users.

Next question: If you are using both email encryption and Secure Share, do you update custom branding just once in the Control Center to account for both interfaces? 

The answer is yes. If you have self-serve branding enabled for your team as part of your subscription, any changes you make will apply to all applicable products. If you change the color, logo, or text, those updates will apply across your different Virtru products.

Another question: How do I add more licenses if I have used all the ones I purchased? 

You will want to reach out to the Virtru sales team. Contact the sales representative you worked with to set up the account initially. They will be happy to help add additional seats for your team so they can begin using Virtru.

Alright, I guess we have no more questions. Thank you again for joining. If you need any help, support.virtru.com is the best place to start, and we are happy to assist if the information you need isn't already there. Have a good one.