Messages encrypted with such certificate ensure the recipient about the authenticity of an e-mail and keep it unreadable to others. You can learn more about it here.īefore it is possible to start encrypting and decrypting messages, both the sender and recipient should get a personal mail certificate. From then on it is possible to send encrypted messages similarly to sending not encrypted ones. It means that both the sender and recipient must send a digitally signed message, which allows adding the certificate to Outlook Contacts (more in this Microsoft article). The recipient saves the certificate and uses the public key to encrypt the sender’s messages.
The certificate is sent with a digitally signed message. In order to send and read encrypted messages, both the sender and recipient must share a digital ID, which contains the private key stored on the sender’s computer and a certificate with a public key.
Microsoft Outlook 2019, 2016, 20 message encryption protects the privacy of the message by converting it from readable plaintext to scrambled ciphertext. Whatever the reason, encrypted e-mails are like sealed envelopes, as opposed to the postcard-like availability of unencrypted e-mails. There may be plenty of reasons for that – from private ones, like writing a personal letter to a close friend or telling your family where you usually keep your keys, to more formal and serious situations, like mailing a check to pay a bill. Sometimes there is a need for additional protection of your private messages from other people. : This post was updated on April 14, 2017.