Digital IDs in Outlook

We decided recently to implement and use a "Digital IDs" on all outgoing email messages. The ID (also known as a digital certificate) is the electronic equivalent to a passport or membership card. It is a credential, issued by a trusted authority (in our case Verisign), that we will present electronically to prove our identity. Although there are a number of authorities who can grant these certificates, we chose VeriSign because they re the Microsoft preferred certificate provider.

To request a digital certificate perform the following:

Start Microsoft Outlook
Choose "Options..." from the Tools menu.
Select the "Security" tab.
Click on the "Get a Digital ID..." button at the bottom of the security options window.
From the Microsoft web page that is displayed, click on the VeriSign icon.
Complete the form with your identifying and billing information. You will receive an email from VeriSign to corroborate your email address. Follow the instructions in this email to download and install your Digital ID on your hard drive. You can now configure Outlook via the Tools - Options - Security to attach a digital signature to every outgoing message or it can be manually added to messages individually. You'll want to pay special attention to your security level settings here.

Since I access my email via VPN from several machines I had to install the certificate on each of them. This is accomplished by exporting the digital certificate and then importing on the others as follows:

On the machine with the certificate installed perform the following:

Start Outlook
From the Tools menu select Options
Select the Security tab
Click the 'Import/Export Digital ID..' button
Select the 'Export your digital ID to a file'
Under Digital ID click Select and choose your certificate
Select an area to save to and enter a password
Click OK

On the other machines copy the digital ID file created and perform the following:

Start Outlook
From the Tools menu select Options
Select the Security tab
Click the 'Import/Export Digital ID..' button
Select the 'Import existing digital ID from a file'
Select the file the digital ID was saved to
Enter the password for the ID
Enter the Digital ID name, (i.e. your name)
Click OK

Finally, to install the certificate directly on our Exchange server so it will be available for use via OWA (Outkook Web Access) you must transfer the exported file to that machine (I simply emailed it to myself -- using double passwords -- and retrieved that email via OWA. I then installed the certificate following via Options|EMail Security|Download.

The cost of the certificate is $15 per person per year.

gll

PS --- It's interesting to note that TypePad.com's postmaster will NOT accept a digitally signed email post. So much for a second level of security!