Introduction To Securing E-mail with Digital Certificates
Digital certificates can be used to digitally sign and encrypt e-mails. When combined with e-mail clients that support S/MIME, such as Thunderbird, digital certificates provide a simple way of mitigating the most common threats to e-mail communication.
For in-depth information about the security risks to e-mail and how these risks are mitigated with digital certificates refer to the ILS document Securing E-mail With Digital Signatures.
This helpsheet will step you through the process of requesting, installing and configuring your S/MIME certificate.
NOTE: These instructions are based on Firefox 2.x or greater and Thunderbird 2.x and greater. If you are running older versions you are encouraged to upgrade prior to attempting this process.
- Read through the entire process before beginning
- Request your S/MIME certificate
- Request the certificate
- Install it into Firefox
- Export it from Firefox
- Install your S/MIME certificate into Thunderbird
- Configure Thunderbird to use your new S/MIME certificate