Saturday, June 2, 2018

How to Sign An Email With Your Smart Card Certificate

At my organization, we recently began using smartcards to log on to systems on one of our networks. While the technology has been around for a couple decades, most people have never used them. Many at our organization wanted to begin signing their emails using the certificate on the smartcard.
To digitally sign an email in Outlook, do the following:
  1. Insert your smartcard into the card reader and log on.
  2. Launch Outlook.
  3. Create a new email.
  4. Address, and write your email as you normally do.
  5. Click on the Options ribbon\menu button (upper left of the email window).
  6. You may see a button named Sign. Click on it. 
  7. If you do not see the button named Sign, click on More Options at the right end of the Options ribbon\menu.
  8. Click on More Options at the right end of the Options ribbon\menu.
  9. Click on Security Settings.
  10. Check the box next to Add digital signature to this message and click OK.
  11. Click on Close.
  12. Click Send.
  13. You will be prompted for your token PIN. Enter your PIN and click OK.
  14. The email is signed and sent.
    1. On new emails you create on the same system in the future, you will see a Sign button in the Options menu\ribbon. 

Note: Once you have Outlook open and sign one email, you can continue signing additional emails without having to enter your PIN. It’s only required once per Outlook session or if you remove and re-enter your smartcard.

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