Watching: Enable hosted s/mime for message encryption
Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) is one of the IETF standards used for public-key encryption and signing MIME data. It offers cryptographic security functionalities like authentication, message integrity and non-repudiation of origin, data encryption and privacy for email applications.
However, before anyone can make use of S/MIME in an email application, an Email and Document Signing Certificate has to be obtained from a publicly recognized CA, such as Comodo. And, once the Email Signing certificate file is purchased and installed on the user’s computer, they will be able to send the digitally signed emails with a digital signature, which comes in the SMIME.p7s file format.
If your email client such as Outlook has installed an Email Signing certificate and has signed the outgoing message, it will automatically send a smime.p7s file along with the outgoing message.
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For example, in outlook, an email signed with a trusted certificate can be found by clicking on the red ribbon.
Yes, technically, you can open the .p7s file using Microsoft Outlook, but it’s not something that is for the users. It’s generally used by email clients like Outlook to authenticate the sender of the email message. So, there’s nothing much you will get by opening it. Again, below are the steps you can follow, if you want to open the P7S file.On your computer, open the folder which contains the P7S file.
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Double click the file.From the list of default applications, select “Microsoft Outlook 2010” and click “Open.”
Email & Document Signing Certificates, also known as CPACs (Comodo Personal Authentication Certificates), are used for emails as well as specific documents. Signing helps in many ways such as:Verifying the identity of the sender of the email to know that the message is authenticAlerting you if the document or the email is tampered and it can even restrict accessFinally, it helps in encrypting an email message so that only the intended recipient can read it
SMIME is the standard used to encrypt an email. Email clients support it and recognize smime.p7s that comes as an attachment and verify the contents. Nevertheless, sometimes it happens that you may find the smime.p7s file as an attachment, especially if you’re using other email hosts such as Gmail. If that’s the case, then no need to worry, it’s completely safe to trust that email. It simply means that email host which you’re using doesn’t support .p7s file like Outlook and it’s displayed as an attachment.
Categories: Mail