Patent ID: 7640575

Claim:
A method of determining a security encoding to be applied to a message being sent from a computing device to at least one recipient, the method comprising the steps of: determining, at the computing device, whether a general message encoding configuration selling thereon is set to a value that indicates that the security encoding to be applied to the message is to be established by a policy engine; if the general message encoding configuration selling on the computing device is set to a value that indicates that the security encoding to be applied to the message is to be established by the policy engine, determining the security encoding to be applied to the message by querying the policy engine for the security encoding to be applied to the message; determining the security encoding to be applied to the message in accordance with a security encoding selection process if the general message encoding configuration selling on the computing device is not set to a value that indicates that the security encoding to be applied to the message is to be established by the policy engine; applying the determined security encoding to the message; and transmitting the message, to which the security encoding has been applied, to the at least one recipient; wherein the message is derived from a second message previously received at the computing device; and wherein the security encoding selection process requires that the same security encoding be applied to the message as the security encoding applied to the second message previously received at the computing device.