A system and method for determining a security encoding to be applied to a message being sent by a user of a computing device, such as a mobile device, for example. In one broad aspect, the method comprises the steps of identifying a message to be sent to at least one recipient; determining, at the computing device, whether a general message encoding configuration setting thereon is set to a value that indicates that the security encoding to be applied to the identified message is to be established by a policy engine; where the general message encoding configuration setting on the computing device is set to a value that indicates that the security encoding to be applied to the identified message is to be established by the policy engine, determining the security encoding to be applied to the identified message by querying the policy engine for the security encoding to be applied to the identified message; applying the determined security encoding to the identified message; and transmitting the identified message to which the security encoding has been applied to the at least one recipient. In one embodiment, the policy engine is a PGP Universal Server.