It only works if you know your party's public key. Then you can compose a message to that person and encrypt it with his/her public key. They will be able to decrypt it with their private key. You see, the public key can only encrypt, but private key can both encrypt and decrypt (public key is different from private key but when they are both applied to the message they encrypt it the same way, like you can go around the block this way or that way but you will come to the same point)
Now how do you get your friend's public key so that you could encrypt messages that you are sending to him/her? Well, he/she must have his/her own digital certificate, preferably issued by a trusted authority. Then he/she can send to you a digitally signed message and you can capture his/her public key from that digitally signed message. Pretty cumbersome actually and you have to force the other person to sign up for a digital certificate because you want to send encrypted mail to that person. -----Original Message----- From: Bowles, John (OIG/OMP) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:40 PM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: S/MIME All, I'm trying to setup S/MIME since we all of a sudden require message security within our organization. I'm trying to get an understanding on how this works in the real world. I've setup a test lab here at work. But that can only help me understand how to get things done internally. I'm looking at a braoder scope of allowing our messages to be secure while passing over the internet to other corporations etc. Can someone point me in the direction on what I need to read to understand this a little bit better I'd really appreciate it. Also, if anyone wants to contact me offline. I have a few questions that I'd like answered if you have time. TIA, _________________ John Bowles Exchange Engineer OIG/HHS [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&; lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Web Interface: http://intm-dl.sparklist.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=exchange&text_mode=&lang=english To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
