Installing and using your certificate in Outlook 2001 for Mac

• Installing your certificate
• Digitally signing your e-mail messages

Installing your certificate

After installing your certificate in Internet Explorer, it will be available for use in Outlook. To use your certificate, do the following:

• Choose "Tools" in the Outlook menu bar
• Choose "Options"
• Choose the "Security" tab

To define your security settings and to specify which certificate you wish to use you need to define your default security settings. To do so you need to click the "Change Settings..." button. You will then see the following screen:

You can create different security settings and give these separate names. You can define the following settings :

• Secure Message Format (type of e-mail)
• Digital Signature Settings
• Encryption Settings

The ‘Digital Signature’ settings allow you too choose a certificate which will be used to sign your emails. You need to click the ‘Choose…’ button to receive the following screen :

This screen allows you to define which certificate you wish the use for signing purposes in the settings you are about to define.
You can view the certificate by clicking on the ‘Properties…’ button. You will then receive a screen which gives an overview of the certificate.

The ‘Signing Certificate’ settings section also allows you to define which type of hashing algorithm you want to use for the creation of your signatures (SHA-1, MD5)
The ‘Encryption’ settings allow you too choose a certificate which will be used to sign your emails. You need to click the ‘Choose…’ button to receive the same screen as presented previously.

To change the default encryption / signing settings click 'Ok…' button to receive the following screen:

Digitally signing your e-mail messages

The first step to securing your e-mail messages is to sign them using your digital certificate.
Your digital signature enables the recipient of your message to verify that you actually sent the message and that it was not altered along the message route.
When you sign your message, it doesn’t mean that anybody can intercept or read your message. Signing a message does not affect the contents of the message in any way or protect the message from being intercepted and read by someone other than the intended recipient. To ensure that only the recipient can read a message, you must also encrypt the message.
If the recipient of your signed message uses an S/MIME–enabled e-mail package, he can still read your message. In that case, your digital signature shows up as an attachment. The signed icon shows that the received message was signed.

The untrusted signature icon shows that the received message was signed by a certificate which was issued by a CA which you do not trust yet (because you have not installed its root certificate). This icon looks as follows :

You can sign your messages each time you want to sign or you can configure your security settings (as described previously) to sign using a specific certificate.

To encrypt your message you need to have a copy of the digital certificate of the intended recipient. When you receive a signed message, you can save the certificate of the sender in your Contacts List. You need to create an entry in the Contacts List if you want to send encrypted email to that person. You must also import his digital certificate into the Contacts List.
You can also find someone's certificate in the online directory of the certification authority