Digitally Signed and Encrypted Email
Digital Signing and Digital Encryption Support
Digitally signed emails are supported with Hosted Exchange Email Professional accounts in Outlook or Outlook Web Access.
To sign or encrypt email digitally, you will need a Digital Certificate, such as those provided by Comodo. Go to their site and follow the "Get it Free Now" link.
Please Note: In order to digitally encrypt an email to any recipient, both you and the recipient must have a valid digital certificate. Also, you must save the recipient in your Contacts along with a copy of the recipient's public key. Therefore, before you can exchange encrypted emails with the recipient, you may need to first exchange digitally signed emails.
How To Digitally Encrypt Email
To sign up for a Digital Certificate from Comodo, you can follow these steps:
- Go to their site the "Get it Free Now" link.
- On the next page type you first and last name, your e-mail address, your country, revocation password, and click the "Agree & Continue" button
- Next, you'll receive a warning message. Click the "Yes" button to request your new certificate
- In 5-15 minutes your certificate will be generated and you will receive e-mail with instructions how to obtain your new Comodo certificate
- Follow link in the e-mail, then type in your e-mail address and the password provided and click "Submit & Continue"
- Next, you'll receive a warning message. Click the "Yes" button to add new certificate to your PC.
Please note, this will install the certificate only on one computer. If you access your Business Exchange service from multiple computers and want to be able to use the certificate from multiple computers, you'll need to install the certificate on each computer. For instructions on how to export your certificate to a file, and to import it on a different computer, click here.
If you are using Outlook 2010 to send an receive email, you can follow these steps:
- Open Outlook 2010
- Click File and then click Options
- Click on Trust Center and click on Trust Center Settings...
- Click on E-mail Security
- Outlook populates the Change Security Settings dialog box with default information. Click OK to accept the defaults
- Click OK
If you are using Outlook 2007 to send an receive email, you can follow these steps:
- Open Outlook 2007
- Click Tools and then click Trust Center...
- Click on Email Security and click on Settings...
- Outlook populates the Change Security Settings dialog box with default information. Click OK to accept the defaults
- Click OK
If you are using Outlook 2003 to send and receive email, you'll need to follow these additional steps to add your certificate:
- Open Outlook 2003
- Click Tools and then click Options...
- Click on the Security tab and click Settings...
- Outlook populates the Change Security Settings dialog box with default information. Click OK to accept the defaults
- Click OK
In order to digitally encrypt an email to any recipient, both you and the recipient must have a valid certificate. Also, you must save the recipient in your Contacts with the recipient's public key. Therefore, before you can exchange encrypted emails with the recipient, you may need to first exchange digitally signed emails. Alternately, if the recipient is a member of the Global Address List for your organization, the user can publish their certificate to the GAL using Outlook 2003/2007 (using the MAPI Protocol) and you'll be able to exchange encrypted emails without exchanging signed emails.
Then when you are composing a message in Outlook 2003/2007, simply select the Digital Encryption button to Digitally Encrypt your email.
In order to Digitally Encrypt an email sent using Outlook Web Access, you will need to match the following requirements:
- Your Secure Email Certificate must first be installed on the computer you are using the OWA from.
- You must first save the recipients Contact card with their public key to the Exchange server using Outlook 2003/2007 (using the MAPI Protocol).
- Windows Vista users must run Internet Explorer as an Administrator (by right clicking on the icon and selecting "Run as Administrator"), or disable the UAC.
- You must log into the Premium OWA over HTTPS (at https://ex.myhosting.com/owa) using Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher.
- You must install the Outlook Web Access S/MIME control from the Options under the E-Mail Security section of the OWA.
Then when composing an email from Outlook Web Access, you can select the Digital Encryption button and send your email.