Secure Email
Certificates (S/MIME)

Encrypt and digitally sign emails with TrustCor Secure Email Certificates (S/MIME). With S/MIME certificates, you can ensure the privacy of your email messages and attachments quickly and effortlessly. S/MIME certificates also verifies the sender's identity by proving that an email received really did come from the "From:" address given.

Why is Email Encryption Needed?

S/MIME encrypts the content of an email when it's transferred from a sender to a receiver.

Message Privacy — Encrypted emails are readable only by the intended recipient. This keeps your emails protected if an unauthorized person attempts to read your emails. Any content or document that is part of the email is kept confidential between the sender and receiver.

Message Integrity — The decryption process of the message involves verifying the contents of the encrypted message. A change in the content of the message would ensure the failure of the decryption process thus making it possible to verify its integrity.

How S/MIME Certificates Work

Signed and Encrypted Email

An S/MIME email message can be signed, encrypted or both. Encrypting a message is done using the recipient's public key. This ensures that only the recipient can decrypt the message, as the encryption is done so that only the recipient's private key can reverse the encryption. Signing the message is done by taking a fingerprint (hash) of the message which is then encrypted via the sender's private key. This ensures to the recipient that the sender of the message is who they say they are, and that the message has not been tampered with since it was signed.

Key Exchange Requirements

As with PGP encryption/decryption, some amount of key exchange is required. In order to encrypt a message to a given recipient, the sender must have a copy of the recipient's public key certificate. This is generally accomplished by having the recipient send the sender a signed S/MIME email message. S/MIME signatures are done in such a way that the sender's public key certificate can be extracted and stored for later use. Most modern email clients will automatically recognize a signed message, extract the public key certificate, and store it for examination and later use.

Advantages of S/MIME Certificates

  • Email Encryption: Encrypts the content of emails sent between two S/MIME enabled users to prevent the message from being read by anyone other than the intended recipient
  • End-to-End Encryption: Protects emails in transit and at rest
  • Digital Signature: Digitally signs the emails sent between two S/MIME enabled users to eliminate any risk of spoofing
  • Electronic Signature for Documents: Electronically signs documents to prove the authorship and informs the recipient about any non-authorized changes
  • Cost-Effective Security: Allows for an unlimited number of messages and documents to be encrypted and signed within a protected email address
  • Historical Support: Certificate validity information is maintained by TrustCor for 7 years post the expiration of the S/MIME certificate, enabling signature verification for historical messages