Headlines are flying with stories of incriminating e-mail messages — and the many court cases that have been launched by “discovered” e-mails. That makes this a very good time for you to be securing your corporate communications with new tools.

Perhaps your idea of protecting your e-mail is to exhort your employees not to say anything in a message that would reveal your company’s deepest secrets. Or perhaps you’re already using more sophisticated practices than this. In either case, there is innovative technology to encrypt and manage your employees’ e-mail in ways your employees otherwise couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Securing and Encrypting Are Two Different Things

It’s not necessary to encrypt every message in order to secure your e-mail communications. But it is necessary to encrypt certain messages to certain people in order for you to be sure those messages are secure:

• It’s Not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Card. Encrypting your company’s messages won’t protect you from legal entanglements, such as the e-mails that were introduced as evidence at Microsoft’s antitrust trial or in investment banker Frank P. Quattrone’s recent “time to clean up those files” trial. Someone will always have saved some readable copy of any e-mail you send. And, in any event, your company may be required by law or custom to preserve readable copies of all e-mails that were sent or received in the course of your business.

• It’s a Good Measure of Protection Nonetheless. Encrypting can be very important, whether or not you have anything to hide. The purpose of encrypting your messages is not to cover up illegal activity or foil a governmental investigation, but to secure your communications from anyone who might be eavesdropping (including unauthorized in-house staff). E-mails are ordinarily formatted and sent across the wire as plain text, and you might be surprised at how often your co-workers reveal sensitive corporate plans and even network passwords.

While encryption isn’t a perfect barrier against e-mails ever being read by the “wrong” people, it’s definitely called for in situations where your communications are intended for a small, trusted circle.